Bring those small worlds on folks, I can't wait to see what everyone else made. I've been avoiding playing them for the week so I can go in fresh and be surprised.
This event has been a ton of fun. Good luck to everyone!
Finally finished and uploaded my timelapse for Small Kingdoms. I kind of like the delay before the judging. Gave me and opportunity to right myself after the weekend and finish up this video without taking away from playing the other submissions. Now I'll go into the weekend fresh and ready to game!
If you're interested in trying out Small Kingdoms, you can check out my game page here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/$15171
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRM7cSgAt-w
Almost DONE! Tomorrow I'll Upload my LD 38 Timelapse!!! :D
This is technically my third Ludum Dare, though during the second one I got (literally) the worst case of food poisoning in my life and never completed it. I had the great priviledge of working alongside several other very talented, inspired folks this run and I look forward to working with them again soon!
We'd be honored if you would give our game a try here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/atlantis And Leave a Comment in our Itch.io board.
I spent the entire week before the Jam rebuilding all my tools, updating my libraries, getting re-familiarized with the pipeline, and getting my work-space all set up for 72 Hours of insanity. This translated into a very high starting efficiency. I spent the entire first day building a robust back-end of the game that would support all the features our designer wanted. It also meant when it came time to compile the code, even with 1 hour scheduled to get the builds running on WebGL and Windows, it compiled and ran flawlessly on the first go with only a single minor shader error.
The acquisition of the Hamilton Soundtrack greatly improved my own mood throughout the jam. 11/10, do recommend.
Every single team member got better at their craft by a magnitude. I've always described high intensity jams like Ludum Dare to be a kind of Crucible and I was not proven wrong.
Most of All: What we made, looks, feels, and plays like a halfway decent game. I'm very happy with what we ended up with... I see all it's flaws, but I'm super happy with what we accomplished.
The damnable Ocean. I spent hours creating this really awesome looking ocean only to have to scrap it at the last minute due to incompatibility issues with WebGL. We have thoughts on how to make a new ocean that will look even better if we move forward... but it still bums me out.
Saturday: The wheels went off the Team for about 12 Hours. Half the team was "Deep in the Flow", and the other half had no idea what was going on. This was a group failure and created a lot of tension. I think we lost a lot of man hours during this time and it's something during our own group post-mortem we've agreed we need to be better about. We ended up taking a huge break to have several small discussions and while I think we walked away as a much better team, it certainly impacted our productivity. Alas, an improvement that will bear fruit in future runs but not this one.
Integration: As the only active programmer, almost all the meshing of Code, Art, Music, and Design at some point fell through my bottleneck. Once Monday hit I ended up putting a total feature freeze on the game and spent the remaining time, from 1am to 8pm (We scheduled 1 hour to get our builds running) getting the basic features done. This meant a whole host of features ended up on the cutting room floor in varying states of completion. I compiled a full list here if you are interested: https://itch.io/t/76217/cut-content-design
Pathfinding: I've done it so many times but for some reason this go-around a solid, perfect implementation has not panned out. I want to go in and do some major overhauls after the jam. For now I have to accept that it has a few quirks because they always occur in favor of the player.
Hit me up on Twitter @OccultSoftworks or post your feedback on our Itch.io board or LDJAM Page. We havn't yet decided if we are gonna finish the game, and would love to hear folks thoughts.
I look forward to playing everyone's games tomorrow!
:cry: :cry: :cry:
Hey folks thanks for the great feedback and reporting bugs to us. We made another release for you guys to enjoy! Captain Destructo and his MOAG awaits!!
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/destructo-island
Hey guys! Check out my game, Conquery at https://conquery.k.vu
It can run on any good desktop browser. So, if you some free time and a desktop browser handy, do check it out.
Conquery is a 2d top-down adventure game. You have to capture all planets to win. But, enemies are patrolling in the space and you don't have weapons. So, you'll have to bring the enemies near captured planets and let the planets kill them.
Currently there's just one level which too, isn't good. But, I plan to add more levels. I want know from you guys whether the game mechanics are good. Please give me feedback. What can I improve?
Thanks.
Cause I'm completely crazy I wish to START playing more of your games at 1pm my time! Don't know how long ill go for but for now I'm taking requests!
Type !addgame in my chat followed by a link to your game to add your game to the queue.
https://www.twitch.tv/drazil100
So I ended up really liking my game, For A Small World This Place Sure Has Big Problems. In terms of what the game accomplishes, it's probably my favorite Ludum Dare game I've submitted.
However, I gotta be honest, I don't really expect that to translate into my highest score ever. Even though I feel like I nailed a bunch of my personal "big things", I don't think that those will translate into the "big things" that make up a particularly well-scoring game.
So let's talk about the good and the bad.
Jesus christ you guys, I added so much stuff to my game - but so much of it was dumb and irrelevant stuff. Like, I spent tons of time on my cinematics - I was geeking out because I had just discovered that I could use coroutines in TypeScript for cinematics and I was amazed by how much faster I could code with them, so of course I overcompensated by spending even more time adding even more cinematics.
In the past, I've continually had this problem where I'll tack on a ton of features, but they'll all sort of be half baked. The same thing sorta happened here. The problem was that I had this storyline in my head where I was like "oh you should meet the professor, and then he should take you to his house, and then he should show you the earth... then you get sucked in... etc". The problem with this storyline is that the game doesn't actually start until AFTER "you get sucked in." So I did all that stuff, it took like a day, and then I was like, "wait a sec, I have no game..."
In the future, what I think that I'll do is immediately prioritize making a room where THE GAME IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING, exactly as it will happen in the final version of the game. In this game, it would have been a room where you're on the planet, the prof is tossing the planet around, etc. Not only that, but that room should look and feel exactly like the room will look in the final version. e.g. the graphics should all be in place, sound effects, particles, etc. I think it's really crucial to get that feel right immediately, and I totally failed to prioritize correctly to do that in this game.
That is definitely the single biggest thing I got wrong in this game.
When I said above that I don't think that my individual wins will translate into an overall good game, this is why. As much as I loved individual aspects of this game, a lot of them feel cobbled together with tape rather than assembled into a good game like, you know, actual good game developers will do.
This is very frustrating to me because I feel like all the pieces are in place for me to make a really good ludum dare game, but I end up focusing on weird/wrong things and screwing it up.
Sigh.
Live and learn!
So I basically decided with a day before the deadline to use a little scrappy library I had written on top of pixi.js for this game. This ended up being both a good and bad choice.
It was good because pixi.js is amazing. I swear, throughout the entire Jam, I think I only had one contention with pixi.js (something about RenderTextures not working). The library is simple and elegant. It works perfectly, and it's incredibly fast. Compare this to, say, phaser.js, which I had tons of issues with in the past - phaser is such an internally inconsistent library that it is incredibly confusing to get up and running. Even Unity is not as consistent as pixi is. PIXI I LOVE YOU.
However, using my own little library was probably not the best choice. The biggest problem was that I had hand-coded a tilemap library, which made every single tile a separate sprite. I had believed that Pixi could handle it, because even on my crappy system Pixi can handle 10k sprites. Well, it turns out that this is the Ludum Dare where I didn't just need one renderer... I NEEDED THREE. (One for left screen, one for right screen, and one to render the BACKGROUND of the tiny world screen.)
So instead of 10k sprites, I had a max of ~3000 (since the sprites were rendering 3 times), and instead of one screen of tiles, I had two, so that's only 1500 tiles a screen, which is a screen smaller than 40x40. Oh crap - my maps were actually larger than 40x40! So that 10k buffer - which I had thought to be a lot - was actually not enough, and my FPS was tanking. Let me just tell you, having perf bugs in the middle of Ludum Dare is one of the crappiest things that can happen to you. The last thing you want to do in LD is waste like 5 hours on trying to eek out an extra 10 frames/sec, especially because the methods by which you resolve perf issues (especially in JS) are often obscure and unclear. I consider myself to be a decent programmer, but god, I hate that so much.
...and so yeah, I did end up wasting a high number of hours on perf to get my tilemaps faster.
That all sucked because I knew that if I had used a real library instead of my own hacked thing, none of that would have effected my LD in the slightest. I know in Unity that Tiled2Unity just uses a single shader. I would have done the same, but coding up a tilemap shader is not exactly something I wanted to do in the time constraints of LD!
On the positive side, I used TypeScript. I am super duper proficient in TypeScript, and that language was never a problem for me. I guarantee it allowed me to code and refactor twice as fast as I would have been able to code using JavaScript. I love TypeScript.
On the negative side, the lack of a decent IDE for pixi.js kills me. Tiled is a great, great tool, but it's only a small part of the Flash-like IDE experience. I was a flash developer when I was a kid, and I have to say that I still haven't found anything nearly as elegant or refined as the Flash IDE was back in the day.
It's so frustrating to have to restart your game every time that you make a change to the x coordinate of something to see if it worked out in-game or not.
I thought that my music was awesome! And apparently so did Newgrounds, because they frontpaged it on their site almost immediately after I posted it there for feedback. That was a huge ego boost. :)
Though I have to admit, the music gets the mood of my game totally wrong - lol. This is because I actually wrote the music for the game early on, before I knew what type of a game it was going to be (that is, a funny one), so there's a big mood clash there, and that's kinda awkward. I don't know how other people will see this; I'm a bit curious!
I told one of my friends that I made a vow with myself to never again save graphics for the final day in Ludum Dare.
The reason I said this might not be the reason you think, though. See, the thing is, I actually really enjoy doing graphics, but I just never get an opportunity to. I always save them for the end and then rush through them at light speed. That's exactly what I did in this game, and it was a huge mistake! I only spent like an hour MAX on my graphics, and they look so much worse than I know that I am capable of. Every time I see them, it makes me really sad that there was so much missed potential because I didn't schedule graphics well into the timeline.
The other problem is that I have no idea how to animate at all, and this is always a big issue in my games - everything is so flat and static. Half the problem is not knowing, and the other half is not feeling comfortable with incorporating animation into the code. There were a lot of steps to do that I just didn't want to bother with when I could be doing other stuff faster, so I didn't. If I felt more comfortable integrating animation into the code, I would have been much more likely to do it.
I put in a funny joke (I think) where everyone is on skateboards because then I wouldn't have to draw a walk cycle. :) But the core problem is still there.
I want to be a better animator.
Vow #2, making it right now, is to become a better animator for LD39. :)
(TO BE CONTINUED...)
You can read about it here, it was made for the Compo
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/lil-planet
Hi everyone! This is my first entry to a Ludum Dare event (or even a game jam). It's also only my second game ever so it's nothing exciting, but I'm proud of having built a game from the ground up in 3 days. That's also considering that my first game used a sort of "Crash Course Kit" with many pre-made assets, and it took a couple months. If you want to check out what I made (although I wasn't able to get most of the mechanics done in time), check out the link below:
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/harry-inks-shrinks
So we at Stuck in a Lift Studios ended up being very proud of our game, to the point where we are continuing development in our own time. However, the jam is over, so now might be a good time to reflect on the good, the bad and the meh about our project.
The Good:
I feel we worked very well as a team; we were all quickly on the same wavelength with what we were doing and how we were going to go about doing it. This meant that we could confidently create high quality assets and gameplay without fear of disconnect between designers. We also managed to not overscope; we settled on a simple game that we knew we could make in the timeframe, which allowed us to polish our experience much more than we would've under other circumstances. Overall I think we ended up with a fun and very playable game. We as a team were also very proud of the visual effects; we feel they bring a great deal of polish to the game that would not be present without them.
I can't speak for the rest of my team but I was very proud of my assets, both art and sound. In fact, the sounds and music are receiving particular praise, which makes me swell with pride.
The Bad:
One thing that is repeatedly coming up in playtesting is our, in hindsight, short-sighted decision to make a local multiplayer-only game. Rarely are people in the same room as each other when playing these kinds of games, so getting anyone to play K.R.A.B.S. or getting any sort of constructive feedback is proving difficult. Thus, when carrying development forward, we are intending to create a single player mode which will allow people who don't have a buddy to hand to enjoy the game as it was intended.
I feel we also need to work on our time management. Sometimes team members were unreliable when it came to turning up to the work space at agreed times, and I feel that this had a negative impact on development.
Hi everyone. I have exported my game to Linux and Mac since Tuesday. Have a good time!
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/naziverse-1
Hey everyone,
We got the webgl version running and are pretty happy with it. If you check it out be sure to turn on full screen mode!
Webgl - https://raudaschl.itch.io/shrink-demo-ludum-dare-38-webgl
Thanks all!
For those who missed the author's (Marwane Kalam-Alami) posts here and on Twitter: Feedback Friends, an external site, is active for LD #38 since submissions. It's dedicated to Ludum Dare, complements ldjam.com and keeps track of games extremely well.
(once again: external site, don't bug Mike about it :))
It's a good way to discover games and keep track of feedback both ways. Browser sorting is based on comments left vs comments received, and how constructive the comments are. "Nice!" Won't get you anywhere ;)
I'm leaving this here because I see lot of people complaining about having to look on reddit, itch and other sites to browse, so I assume they missed the announcements about Feedback Friends.
Since voting is delayed I think we shouldn't complain, shit happens, but get to playing through the weekend and just save the games for when the voting is up.
Cheers!
Hey Everyone!
Just a quick pre-vote post. I have just written a brief game guide to assist players in my game. Hopefully it will iron out any questions people may have, and explain a little bit of the design process at the same time. Here's a link to the new game guide and my game page. Postmortem incoming at some point over the weekend. Happy judging all!
Cheers! :smile:
Come check out my Ludum dare entry GIANT! Giant is a 2d base building game in a small world! You can create any structure and build in a flat 2d world! Can you build some thing Giant?
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/giant-1
Thumbs up, guys : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/buteratos
Link on Game Side Story : http://www.gamesidestory.com/2017/04/28/les-jeux-du-ludum-dare-38-1/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5o7BSO60lIA
The games on this video :
Fatal System Error : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/fatal-system-error
A Really Small World : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/a-really-small-world
Atmosphere : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/atmosphere
A small World in a big Universe : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/a-small-world-in-a-big-universe
Bill's Micro Adventure : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/bills-micro-adventure
Star keeper : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/star-keeper
A Week's Passing : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/a-weeks-passing
Cosmonaut Pavel Tokarev : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/cosmonaut-pavel-tokarev
Goo's Tiny World Adventure : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/goos-tiny-world-adventure
Crunching Creatures : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/crunching-creatures
Lymphocyte Counterattack : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/lymphocyte-counterattack
Earth Moon Smash Squadron : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/earth-moon-smash-squadron
Little Satellite of Doom : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/little-satellite-of-doom
Lost In Space : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/list-in-space
Flatland : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/flatland
Dung Beetle : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/dung-beetle
Hey folks!
I realize how frustrating this is going to sound, pushing the judging start time back again. I've had a number of people approach me with concerns about game browsing, and I want to be sure I give that enough attention as well. My apologies especially to those of you in the EU/UK that have been waiting around all morning for something to happen. It wasn't until last night before bed I first mentioned I was running behind. Frankly, I was expecting to get much more done on Thursday.
I shouldn't need too much more time, but I have some appointments to keep today (Dentist), tomorrow (Family), and a couple pickups I'm waiting to arrange.
So to be a bit more specific, I'm shooting to kick this off around 9 PM ET on Sunday April 30th (i.e. when the Compo would have ended had LD been this weekend). If you're in the EU/UK, that probably means you should just sleep and ignore it until Monday.
Tune in Sunday night (or Monday morning) for the Judging kickoff.
It's not a long list. I just need a few good blocks of time to finish them up. Many of these are dependent/lead in to the next thing.
/raw/ images, /content instead, but hey~~/games (~~Compo+Jam, Compo, Jam~~, by Coolness, etc).
Okay! Enough stuff is working that you can start voting. I need a couple hours with an awake brain to finish the coolness sorting. For the time being, I'm linking to Feedback Friends at the top of the /games views.
We finally got the game ported to WebGL. We had to switch around the keyboard controls a little (turns out having the player repeatedly press Ctrl + S in a browser is not a great idea... :thinking:)
Web Edition: https://hastilyassembled.itch.io/murder-mitosis
Project Page: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/murder-mitosis
We've had literally no one give us feedback on our game. Give it a shot for us?
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/eat
My first game for ludum dare, I really enjoyed the experience and will definitely be participating in the next one :))
Just thought I would share my game for any possible feedback:
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/finitely-big
After having attempted 6 of the last 7 Ludum Dare Compos, and only having submitted a game twice, it was crucial for my own well being/sanity/confidence that I actually complete a game this time around. Of my previous two submissions, only one can be considered a game (Square Peg, Round Hole). The first game I submitted was nowhere near finished, and can only be considered a proof of concept (Fartboy).
This time around - I did complete a game. Not without it's problems, of course, but a game none-the-less. That game is the aptly named "Space Aliens Are Coming!"...
Preparations: After so many failed attempts, I was determined to sleep well and be fresh for the start of this Compo. That didn't happen! I was unable to battle my insomnia, as per usual, and new I was in for a tough weekend. I was stocked up on some less than ideal food (pizza, canned ravioli, candy, soda... oh - and coffee), so I felt ready for the challenge. I had also spent some time during the week leading up to LD working in 2D on Unity, so I would learn. I've never worked in 2D before, and thought that it might be easier and quicker to make graphics in 2D rather than having to struggle with my horrible skills in Blender.
THE THEME:First off. Let me assure you that I'm not one of those who complain about the theme... I like a challenge and I like when themes are forcing me to think in ways I'm not used to. But, you just need to look at the crazy amount of similar walking around a small planet games this LD provided to realize that this wasn't the most inspiring theme of all time. It's not that the theme is bad - it's just that it doesn't really push for original and unique games. Whatever you do, it needs to take place in "A Small World", and so that representation will often either be a restricted area of land, or a small planet (as I ended up doing - more on that below).
So, here's what happened: I had looked through the final round voting themes and penned down a few basic ideas for all but three of the themes. Of course - "A Small World" was one of them. That's fine. I scratched my head good and hard, until bleeding occured, but no idea would form in my head. Nothing! Zilch! At least, nothing that inspired me to start making a game. I wanted something unique - something fun. I thought of Lego/Block type survival game. I thought of a tiny Risk type strategy game where you would conquer lands. I thought of a Kindergarten as the world. Then, I thought I had the idea with a "Desperate Housewives" type setting - a suburban neighborhood, which was your world, and strange things going on in the neighbors houses. Yes - it could be a great game... but, if it were to be: It could not be made in 48 hours.
I ended up choosing an idea I had jotted down for if "Island" had won. A pretty simple, but interesting way of doing your typical stranded on a deserted island, trying to survive, game. I had it all figured out in my head how the game was going to play out. Coding wise, I was confident it could be done... that's not the game I ended up submitting to the compo. Find out why in the "What went to hell?" section of this Post Mortem.
Obviously... I made a game! Yay!
I stuck with it, you know. After having wasted the first 10 hours on the Island survival game that wasn't to be, and going to bed thinking "I've failed yet another Ludum Dare", I got up in the morning with a new simple idea and got working on it straight away. The new idea didn't have the unique and original gameplay that the island game would have had, but it was a fairly simple and straight forward idea that I was confident I could complete in time. And that is, after all, the most important thing.
I'm quite pleased with how it turned out, to be honest. I like how the little aliens on the planet have their own (simple) AI, and go about doing their thing, while you go around trying to protect them. Aesthetically, it's as good as I can probably do in a short amount of time - seeing as I've got the skills of a 5-year old when it comes to drawing.
I also allowed myself to sleep the full 8 hours on the second night, despite feeling pressed for time. In the past I would've set the alarm to get up bright and early, but I didn't this time - a well rested mind works faster. Still didn't sleep well - but at least I didn't stress myself out. This probably helped me deal with the final stretch... there was so much left that needed to be done in the closing hours, and I worked faster that ever before to get it done. I was recording sounds with half an hour to go, and got the music in 5 minutes before the deadline. Phew!
Once submitted... I did feel victorious. I had defeated the demon inside that had plagued me the previous couple of Ludum Dares. The one that kept whispering in my ear: "You will fail!".
But, it wasn't all smooth sailing (no pun intended). My original idea that I started working on was an island survival game. I spent a good 6 hours trying to make a visual representation with my abyssmal skills at drawing. I tried a cartoon 2D look - Failed! Gave up on 2D and went in 3D using a unity terrain... came out fairly ok until I needed a Palm Tree... could not make it (Boy! do I suck at art). Plopped in Unity premade palm trees and made some bushes... took a screen cap and used that to make it look like a painting, as I intended to return to 2D. Shortly thereafter I realized there is no way I can make the remaining graphics fit in with the environment. Also, the oil painting style meant I wouldn't be able to animate things and give it some life. I gave up with tears in my eyes... believing I had failed yet another Ludum Dare.
Continuing with the graphics. That is my curse. I got the most important things visualized in the game, but a lot of things never got done in time. The worst offenders would be the player and your worker aliens. Never got around to making proper sprites for them, and ended up having to submit with the placeholder graphics I had created. It makes the game a lot less pleasing to play, but it still works as intended. Buildings needed redoing, and I should have gotten around to adding some effects to visualize when your "worker aliens" are working - especially for chopping wood and fueling the missile, as I feel players may not understand what is going on when the aliens stand still at these positions on the planet.
I also feel that maybe I spent a little too much time and effort on the "worker aliens" AI and having them do a lot of actions, leaving the player with only one job: Shoot down invading alien ships. The game would have been better if the player had more things to do... though - I personally quite enjoy watching the little workers going around doing their thing (would enjoy it a lot more had they been nice looking and animated).
I still didn't do what I always tell myself to do: Make a schedule and plan out the features and how to implement them!
This time, I actually feel like making a post-compo version of the game. Not because the game is great, but because I want to see what it would be if I had completed all the things I wanted originally. There were a number of features that I removed early on - knowing I would not have time to finish them. These would be limited Ammo - which needs to be produced by the worker aliens, healing of the player, and some more things for the kids that will influence their effectiveness as adult workers.
The post-compo version will also allow me to improve some graphics - mainly the player and the aliens. As of writing this - I have already made the player!
Can't wait for the next LD!
Find the game here:
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/working-title-ld38
Me neither.
The new build has bug fixes and a resized hat, huzzaa!
Tags: animated gif, build, fixes, gif
Hey guys! I updated my game, Land Ahoy!, fixing a small but annoying bug where sometimes the water simulation would "skip" forward in time causing the water to flicker in an ugly fashion. It was not a critical bug but I felt really bad every time it happened so I figured I'll just take care of that.
If you haven't played the game, head on over to its site at: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/land-ahoy
Thanks for reading!
Fancy yourself a FPS kingpin - see if you can beat @morbidcamel101's high score of 567780 on WAVE 3 of extreme mode!
(Not @morbidcamel101)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeBlsU5Yxwg&feature=youtu.be
Hi all! Here's the game we made for the jam:
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/a-small-war
Not much of a story this time, you send units on four lanes to defeat the enemy tower and they queue in a very orderly fashion! Some strategy is involved, although for now it's super easy... Maybe we'll do a post jam version with a bit more challenge!
While I'm at it, happy 15th birthday to Ludum Dare! As for our (somewhat organic and changing) team, it is our 5 years Ludum Dare anniversary, if I recall correctly. It kind of felt like going back to our roots, as the first one we participated in had 'Tiny World' for a theme! This edition has been the first time we didn't use a professional software for creating the graphics, as we gave a shot at Magica Voxel.
Hope you enjoy!
I made a post over on LdJam.com when we finished, but forgot to make a post here.
My team and I feel we had quite a successful jam all in all.
Little house of horrors is a game where you explore an “abandoned” mansion to find clues to close the portals before Cthulhu devours our Small World.
You can play it here.
And here is a link to the Jam page where you can get more info
Hey guys,
It's been floating around this week, but I wanted to again bring up the excellent LD Feedback Friends as a good option for finding new games to play.
http://feedback.ld.intricati.com/
A sleek, easy-to-use option for finding LD games
What's so good about this site?
Well, two things. First, it implements a cover art for entries, so you can kind of see what each game is like.
The second, most important thing, is that it ranks games by something analogous to Coolness. Jammers who leave feedback gain points, and the ratio of points of feedback given vs. points of feedback received is used to rank games. This means the first games you'll see are ones whose devs help out the community, but need feedback themselves. There's also an option to 'Rescue' games with high given points that haven't received any feedback yet.
I think this is a cool way to reward participation in the community, and help spread feedback across many games. As games receive feedback, their points equalize and they fall down in the ratings, so you should be seeing a different sets of games as over time the relative point scores change.
If you think all of that is crap, or just too complicated, there's also a random sort option.
Flat World is a 1v1 puzzle/action game. One player is on the top side of a flat world, the other on the bottom, and you push blocks to your opponent's side until one of the two gets a column outside the playing area and loses. To push blocks you need to join three or more blocks of the same color horizontally or vertically. The blocks beneath the ones you joined are pushed to the other side. Perhaps the video below explains it better:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3xqFb4CDvM
Flat World is our first VS multiplayer game. It was made in Unity with a library called SVG Importer that handles vectorial graphics. We are pretty happy with how it turned out, but now we intend to improve pretty much all aspects of it. :)
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/flat-world-1
https://twitter.com/OnceABirdGames
http://onceabird.com/outsider/
So I had no clue how easy it was to make an HTML5 build using Unity. So for ease of play, I added one to our itch page so check it out!
itch: https://groupeffort.itch.io/solar-smash
ldjam: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/space-jam-working-title
Also here is a gif of our game (Warning: I am not great at capturing gifs :sweat_smile:)
:comet: :earthafrica: :sunny: Also a big congrats to everyone that partook in the event! It was a blast :sunny: :earthafrica: :comet:
Send me a link to your Ludum Dare game! If it supports mac (or if it's playable on the web), I'll give it a shot and leave some feedback.
You can check out my game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/icarus-isolation
Hi guys ! New update for fixing the controls as it was really frustrating. Physic is still shitty but at least you have better control over the character and it is less frustrating ;)
Hope you enjoy :)
Download it on Itch.io and the game page on Ludum Dare
Here is the full Changelog :
BugFix : Input lag removed so the game is now playable
BugFix : Wooden Crate Fix so it does not teleport to the previous button
Added an ESC button to go back on the menu (for quitting game or retrying level)
Transition to the credits when finishing the game... so you don't have to wait for something as there is nothing to come ;)
Check out Giant on Itch.io
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/giant-1
3 AM setting up bullets and guns for our Jam entry Destructo Island. At this point we had no idea how it's going to come out and highly strung on Red Bull!
https://clips.twitch.tv/PrettyOutstandingDelicataRiPepperonis
Statera - Achieving peace and balance through violence
BUG FIXES:
Some Rhinos move away from the planet forever making them impossible to go extinct (which is a large problem).
Higher damage from guns and lightning to prevent the animals not dying which slows the game and makes it unplayable.
Removed the fastest mode from quality settings because it prevents the slimes from moving and makes the game unplayable
UI Scaling problem for people with a monitor aspect ratio different from 16:9 because the button can be outside the game boundaries and makes the game unplayable (makes people stuck on the menu screen)
Game Link: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/statera
Now you can play my entry For Eternity!
I ran into some issues with unity's cloud build and with my multithreaded pathfinding code but i think that they are resolved by now.
Have fun!
Hey guys,
This is my first time in Ludum dare. I finally finished fixing most of the bugs in my game (that I know of :D). Check it out and tell me what you think.
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/there-shall-be-light
Hope you like it!
And for everyone who participated in the event. Be proud of what you achieved here :)
Sorry for the following rant. The purpose of LD is of course to improve our own abilities. But part of the reason we moved to the new website was to make judging more fair, so the competition is at least somewhat important. Since there are bugs in my game I'd like to fix, but I don't want to for the sake of fair competition, the following rant is meant to alleviate some of the stress I get from seeing bug fix posts.
Is it just me, or are more people doing bug fixes this time around. I get the feeling that people are being a little to fast and loose with the bug fixes. Things that should go in a post-compo/jam release are just being put in the game itself. If I remember correctly, the rules only allow for fixing bugs that make the game unplayable. If you have a bug that makes the game not very fun, but it still runs, then that bug is part of the product you released for the competition. Of course there are going to be problematic bugs in a game made in 48 hours, but part of the skill required for a competition like this is limiting the effects of such bugs. If you can go in during the week after and fix ones that just make your game not very fun, that feels like you are doing more than just making the game playable.
Hey all! I'm looking to try some of your games! Just comment below with a link (preferably browser games, but Mac downloadables are also okay)!
I'll try to give you some feedback.
All I ask is that you consider giving some feedback for my game too! It's my first game jam game and our team was formed through Reddit :)
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/no-minor-task-party-of-a-lifetime
For everybody looking for 10 minutes pause:
A Small World, floating in space, surrounded by mysterious islands…
Now its up to your finger-force to collect all islands around your small world.
If you start the game hit the flower(or check the highscores first), at first just type your name, set the lifetime(8/12/18 seconds) and the ammount of islands(2/3/4).
Hit the flower again and the adventure beginns. Type the words as fast as your fingers allow. If one of the islands floats to long its going to void. This will cause half of your island break away(with the corresponding points and 1 of your initial 3 lifes).
If all of your lifes are gone, you lost, and (if no problems in my system occour) your final score is submitted to the global Highscore list.
EDIT: cause sometimes there are no highscores set ill add a 2nd version on itch.io(same link just below) with a logger attatched. if you have this problem may consider use this version to localize the bug(helps me learning). but please just rate the original version WITH BUG. (fair for all).
Here at https://poller2810.itch.io/island you find the package with the game and the full eclipse project in 2 downloads for your playtesting! if any errors or questions occur feel free to email me(see screenshot for message) ill respond as fast as possible.
and ofc for later voting my game on ldjam.com: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/island-catcher
People had a hard time understanding the mechanics of the game, and this level didn't explain it well enough so I improved it a bit (hopefully :P)
This is how it used to be:
How it is now:
Feel free to check it out here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/space-hummus
Advertise links of games I should play for mac or web (I would prefer online games)
:dove::dove: Since there is a dramatic learning curve to the controls in Icarus Isolation ( https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/icarus-isolation ). I thought I'd show you how the game plays once you master the controls.
I will update the project so that there are more control options and a very clear tutorial (I have a temporary tutorial on YouTube) will be in the game. I will not change the controls, since I chose for these controls to add more realism and provide more options for movement, but I will do what I can to make them easier to master and I will provide the option to switch to mouse controls. :dove::dove:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iezIcraIm4&feature=youtu.be
:dove::dove::dove::dove::dove::dove::dove::dove:
Play Until Tomorrow to find out!
Hi guys, I made a video where I play my game "Shadows Painting". If you liked the game don't forgot to play it, just click on this link en download it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZ0f9B46SYU
Download Link: http://oficialpixel.wixsite.com/pixelproductionsp/copia-maydie
Hi! Finally, I've ported my game to HTML5 so you can check it on both Itch.io and Game Jolt... you can pick the one you prefer if you'd like to give it a try :blush:.
The Last Haven is a fast-paced action platformer filled with jetpacks and laser rifles.
Using Blender Game Engine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwgiEO37N-U&feature=youtu.be
(Video in portuguese, sorry about this. But you can also watch the Timelapse and play the game (in English). Starts as 1:28).
Im planning on playing some games. Just leave a link to your game, and ill play and record it.
All i ask for is just if you would mind checking out our game. its our first gamejam submission ever, so any feedback whould be amazing! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/infinite-planet
Have a nice day everybody!
A quick postmortem for my first time in Ludum Dare. Nothing fancy.
And unfortunately, basically my only day for me. The first thing I learned was the take days off for the game jam. You can get a lot done in one day, but you can get even more done in three days. It's a crazy though, but I swear it's true. This happened because I only decided to do this game jam about two weeks before, which isn't long enough to request days off where I work. Going my next game jam I'll be much more prepared in this regard.
I also found out I had sort of put myself into a design rut, so to speak. Most of my recent efforts have been on designing game mechanics and maybe implementing them. Nothing in regards to tying game systems together, which I actually did a bit of during development of this game. So fortunately that's something on my mind now which is important if I want to try to release some full games down the line. I'll be looking to dive more into the engine side of things whenever I get the chance.
I wasn't able to finish my game due to the whole only having one whole day to work on it, but I want to finish what I had in mind, and maybe polish up a bit. Even if the jam is over it'll be a good exercise and it'll be a good thing to show off. I'll also want to dive a bit more into modelling for some more decent programmer art. I know it's not necessary, but I'd also like to brush up on my modeling skills since I know some possibly outdated basics. It'd also help in making more small games, which I'd like to do more of.
My name is Nathan Hicks (Programmer) with Apostate Games - Jason Varnell (Artist) and I did the game Plutus as our #ldjam38 submission. Please check out the game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/plutus
Since we wanted to focus on getting the game done in time with all planned features we stayed away from doing a devlog throughout the weekend so over the next few days we will be posting day by day recaps from start to finish of all the progress, decisions made, and even problems we ran into or things we had to cut from the final entry. If you have any questions please post them in the comments! :smile:
Day 1: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/plutus/plutus-dev-blog-ldjam-recap-day-1
Woke up, had some coffee and breakfast then got straight down to work on the game mechanics and art. Jason began hand drawing most of the assets with pencil and paper and by the end of the night scanned them and started editing them in Photoshop (I believe all but the planets were started that day). I quickly got our logo intro in as well the Main Menu and pause menu systems in with options for Fullscreen V-Sync and volume controls for both music and SFX so I could hammer out the boring stuff first then get to the fun part - the game itself. I threw in some placeholder circles for the planets and set up the entire scene and determined a good size for the entirety of the map as well as the game objects (also based on some limitations from the engine). Set up the planets rotational movements around the sun - implemented the player controls and began playing with physics controls and settings which I continued to tweak throughout the entirety of the weekend.
By the end of the 2nd night I had fully explorable solar system with very scarce space debris to start but if smaller then you were collectible as well as the speed boost power up. Added some cheat buttons to allow me to continue to grow to make sure scaling the player up and the rest of the scene down would make sense visually - this also took a lot of tweaking for the entirity of the weekend and still could use some adjustments and in the future will require some pretty intense math to calculate properly so went with simple to start. Most of the art assets were completed the following day. Here is what we were at in terms of the features by end of day:
Features Implemented Day 2: - ~~Player grows larger while all else in the solar system gets smaller respectively to create illusion of growth~~ - ~~Collecting debris smaller than you~~ until bigger than other planets - ~~Death by Sun~~ - Death by hitting too many larger objects (explode and break apart) - ~~Power ups (Shield and Warp Drive - Also originally planned alien threats and missile power-ups)~~ - Notifications of when bigger than certain planets and when items acquired - ~~Rotation of planets around the sun~~ - Gravitational pull of the planets - ~~Intro Story and Cutscene~~
A lot of the day was spent trying to come up with good feeling physics controls and proper scaling. But all in all it was a pretty chill day and we didn't worry too much and figured it would be no problem to finish in time. Although I did want to work on original music and sfx so played around with that for a bit but by the time I came up with a good tune and picked out all the instruments (only thing left was a LOT of editing) I decided it was best to get some sleep and work on that last since the game itself was the more important focus. After all we did have some collections of public domain music and sfx stored on on our drives (not just for the jam but for any project). So decided sleep was very important in the remaining days to be able to focus 100% on the task at hand so we went to bed fairly early and got decent sleep and had planned to finish the rest of the major features as well as figuring out a good size ratio and mass values the following day.
Day 3 Recap will be posted tomorrow :smile:
In the meantime while waiting for voting please check out our other game we currently have on steam greenlight and tell us what you think!
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=872678368
Also follow us on social media and our website for future games and updates: - http://www.apostategames.com/ - https://www.facebook.com/apostategames/ - https://twitter.com/apostate_games
We've created a timelapse video for our Ludum Dare Jam Entry Naughty Gnomes.
Enjoy the two of us working our asses off 72 hrs. Almost the whole process is covered in this video, only ~3 hrs of real time are missing from the second day.
Jam entry: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/naughty-gnomes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKvfqVHrQRY&feature=youtu.be
Have fun watching the video! :smile:
Hibernaculum is a simple game where to progress to next level you need to collect all the puzzle pieces and solve a riddle. The player can move only left or right, and is stuck in a snow globe. Thankfully the player also controls the rotation of the world, so one can position the world as best suited for the player character.
Go to our page HERE to play the game and share any feedback!
But, how did the development go? Well, today I am going to answer that question from my perspective.
As always, nothing can go 100% smoothly. Some bad stuff happened, and we should learn from it.
I rewrote the character controller 3 times during the the whole jam. The last one I didn't even use and reverted back to 2nd version. So why?
The 1st version's problem was ground detection. It was physically-based, used Rigidbody and a trigger under the player model to check if it's grounded. It worked great on flat ground, but on the hills/angled terrain the jumps were multiplied. The problem was of course that the trigger was still detecting ground on the angled terrain even when the player was visibly in air. Adding OnCollisionStay() event listener to calculate the terrain's angle helped a bit, but in the end it transformed into a hack and still didn't work properly. I think that the problem was in the accuracy of the single collider. Maybe if I'd use a raycasting technique and cast few rays in different directions from the feet of the player it would work better.
But instead of doing that, I remembered that Unity provides a CharacterController class and so I decided to rewrite and use it. After few failed attempts to simply reuse 3rd person controller from Unity's Standard Assets, I wrote it from scratch. Now CharacterController is not physically-based, but in the end it didn't matter. I faked the smooth jump with a timer and tweaked all the values till it felt nice. It worked.
So why did I rewrote it, and went back to it again? Well I thought Unity is broken or something, the CharacterController controller (that redundancy) could slide on top of colliders. Wait what? Yeah. After wasting hours trying to tweak the controller and messing with colliders I decided to rewrite it again. Thankfully in the middle of a rewrite I had an epiphany. It wasn't the controller problem. It was because my world was constrained Rigidbody. After changing the world to simply be a bunch of colliders everything worked!
So what's the lesson here?
CharacterController and Rigidbody interact with each other, I wouldn't have this problem;![char-controller-test-scene][img4]
So even though we designed our game pretty good and considered many things, we didn't think enough about puzzles. Even though they were like the next main mechanic after the world rotation. We decided on few possible puzzle ideas, and that player needs to collect pieces in the world and that's that. No actual puzzle design. We just sort of went with "we'll figure it out as we'll go". Now, sometimes that works, but I think if we'd settle on few puzzle ideas before hand we'd need not to rush in the end with riddle idea because implementing puzzles just wasn't happening with that little time left and no clear idea.
So the lesson here is: PLAN, PLAN and one more time PLAN ahead.
At least on Arch Linux.
1st of all, I really appreciate that Unity does the Linux version of the Editor at all. But it's not yet fully ready to be used in production. I won't go too deep into this coz it's not that exciting anyways. Here some examples of what happened to me while I was developing Hibernaculum:
OnGUI redraw errors inside the editor;Lesson here: test your development environment before actually using it to develop stuff.
Missing materials, empty models, scene merging... Sounds annoying yet? I did everything internet said to set up Unity for git, except the "don't use git and Unity" part. I guess they were right. I don't know why, and how those things happened, and frankly I don't want know. But it was very annoying. I think it was .meta files, and git incorrectly merging them? I'll need to test this more if I want to use Unity and git. But maybe, just maybe, I should learn another version control software. Broaden my horizon so to speak.
Lesson: Know your tools. (x2) and Test your development environment before actually using it. (x2)
This is pretty awesome, I am usually either simply okay with my idea, or don't like it in the end. This time the core idea was simple and unique enough. Even though it provided some difficulties in regards to level design (the whole "things should only be placed where player could reach them aka tangent of the circle"), I think it's pretty unique and cool one.
So this was the first time I worked in a team for Ludum Dare, and my first time Jamming not doing Compo. This means I could ignore all areas I am not good at, since I had the amazing talent of @Quaternius for Art and Music, and focus on coding. The Jam also offers more time which is always nice.
Working in a team is also why we picked a nice idea in the end. We brainstormed together and threw tons of ideas into the mix. Then we talked about our ideas in more detail to each other, and then rated them. In the end we had 2 ideas to choose from and we rated them again more in depth. That was the best brainstorming session I ever had.
I know I said that we didn't have clear and defined goals for puzzles, but everything else was there from the beginning. It's very refreshing to have a plan for Ludum Dare and simply stick to it. Even though we cut a lot of content in the end, and of course the whole puzzle fiasco, we had a clear idea of what the game is from the get go.
Unity's Asset Store is amazing. I was trying to code the shaders for the game, but we didn't like them and it was getting too complicated (I am not that good with shaders, let alone whole Unity's shader model), so getting onto Asset Store and finding what we liked for free was very liberating. Now, we could only do it because it was Jam, not Compo, but still it was nice.
In the end, it all was very nice experience. Especially considering I didn't want to participate at all and was demotivated at the time. But @Quaternius did the right call, and made me do it, and for that I am grateful.
Am I alone in thinking that Unity's the debugger has come a long way - I had no crashes this time around.
https://clips.twitch.tv/HonorableOnerousRadishMoreCowbell
It's rare that I end up falling in love with a game jam game. Most of the time I'm frustrated with the number of bugs and glitches that needs resolving, or otherwise unimpressed with how the mechanics I thought would be fun ended up playing out, and I end up too burned out to want to return.
This time it's different.
Although the game jam is long over, and what I'm currently working on isn't going to be released until after the judging and voting closes, (need to retain the 'competition' part of this somehow), I'm still continuing with the game we built at the weekend. Playing around with our existing mechanics to create new and interesting game modes. Putting in the ground work to have AI opponents so that our local multiplayer game has a single player option. I've spent the last couple of nights coming home from work to put together new and improved user interfaces (shown below), and I've got even more work lined up putting together a screen to allow players to customise their controls.
All the feedback our game has received so far is really helping us refine our work, and will eventually lead to a better experience for everyone. Even if you don't play our game in it's current state (which I still recommend you at least try to do so - find a friend, it's better that way), leave some feedback on the games you do play, you never know what your words might inspire.
Right now that I've said that, I need get on with playing other people's games and leaving feedback.
You can find K.R.A.B.S. here:
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/k-r-a-b-s
For those who missed the author's (Marwane Kalam-Alami) and others' posts here and on Twitter: Feedback Friends, an external site, is active for LD #38 since submissions. It's dedicated to Ludum Dare, has been used for previous LDs, complements ldjam.com and keeps track of games extremely well.
It's a good way to discover games and keep track of feedback both ways (which we don't have on ldjam.com yet). Browser sorting is based on comments given vs comments received, and comments are rated based on length and keywords. There's also a random game picker and option to show games with least comments.
I'm leaving this here again, because I still see people complaining about having to look on other, general sites to browse, so I assume they missed this information.
Site doesn't support teams unfortunately, so only the team leader (on whose page the game is listed) can contribute to the comment rating - but all feedback is precious for creators, and the site is a breeze to use just as browser.
Since voting is delayed I think it's a good place to find games over the weekend and save / bookmark the games we like for when the voting is up.
Cheers!
Yo guys, check this shit out RIGHT NOW it's the bomb!
page: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/midnight-squansh
Hello everyone ! i just posted a pc fixed version and a mac version ( untested :( ) of our jam game, "le monde est petit!" - Smallworld Supermarket!
here is the Fixed version log :
The kid wasn’t working ( bad layers),
the mission UI was showing only 3 missions not 5,
Improve the readability of how to play screen.
i corrected some colliders size who was too big for the cart.
i keep the original version of course if some of you want to test the version of monday.
I hope you will have some fun playing our game :)
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/comme-le-monde-est-petit-smalltalk-supermarket
here is some screenshots to make you interested in our game :
When two people work on the same scene we had headaches like this. I remember there was a setting in the past to make scene files text based but it is what it is.
https://clips.twitch.tv/BloodyTransparentBottleRitzMitz
The world record of 76, could be the best theoretical score. Some have even talked to me about bruteforcing HexCity, which could lead to an optimal solution.
Even after over 6 hours of studying the game Paxiuz admitted that the game did not reveal a guaranteed best pattern. He believes that 80 is impossible and doubts that anyone could beat his score of 76.
The update 1.0.1 includes * Better tooltips * Hotkeys (1-8 for buildings and U for undo) * Swapped farm and house in the menu
Build a huge base or make some awsom layouts! giant is a 2d game where you create a base in a top down view! This is my second ld entry!
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/giant-1
My Compo game got buried in the games list so I'm posting about it to get it a few views. It's called Rogue Planet, a minimal graphic HTML/JavaScript game with a kind of sci-fi horror feel. It's about colonists trying to survive on a dark planet till rescue. They have to send out guides looking for safe areas to move their camp and collect more resources. The guides lights dim over time, sometimes they die and the light stops moving or a creature gets them and the light suddenly goes out. Looking for feedback to develop this game after. Hope people enjoy it.
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/rogue-planet
Hello people! I have been getting a lot of comments about my game being a bit too hard so i updated my game page with a video of a full playthrough of the game. I finish it in just 6 minutes, so i share it with you if you want to see the whole game but find it too hard to finish
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3Fch7xceww
Here is the page of my game if you wanna try it!
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/antnator
About to start streaming more of your wonderful games! If you want me to play your game stop on by! You can add your game to the queue with !addgame followed by a link to your game!
https://www.twitch.tv/drazil100
Python, as a language, is pretty great; it uses pretty intuitive syntax, has thorough documentation and support, and is overall versatile and easy to pick up. However, one thing that it absolutely sucks at is exporting to an executable, especially if you use external assets and libraries.
This was my first Ludum Dare, and I chose to program Seven Pillars in python (using pygame). After finishing the Compo on Saturday, I started researching ways to actually distribute so that people wouldn't have to literally download Ubuntu, python, and pygame -- and clone my GitHub repository -- in order to play my game.
If anyone else has this problem, there is a very useful walkthrough here: https://irwinkwan.com/2013/04/29/python-executables-pyinstaller-and-a-48-hour-game-design-compo/. It was made by a participant of LD26 and is the only reason my game is now reasonably playable outside of my computer.
Overall, it was a useful experience, and while I almost certainly will avoid using python/pygame in the future (in favor of a more cross-platform-friendly engine like Unity), I'm glad I managed to find a way to compile Seven Pillars for Windows before judging began.
You can check out my submission here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/seven-pillars
Bureaucratic Deity Simulator 2018
Turns out there are a lot of small asteroids out there and the powers that be (your boss) have decided that they should be transformed into living worlds. The catch is that your boss is really into flat world, like really really into it, they chose all flat asteroids, oh well that's divine life.
That's easy, just drag the tiles from you scroll of power and place them on the asteroid, simple.
No wait, that's not true, not completely. Sometimes when you place a tile next to another one it'll change. Mountains erode from the sea and a river next to a grasslands allow for a village to settle. There are a complex set of rules so its not actually simple at all... sorry... Oh, but there's a handy cheat card so it's alright (so sayeth the boss).
Last time @douglass and I made a game about a proud blimp pilot, you don't have to play it, I won't be upset. This time around we added two friends into the mix (@musluk who did all the music and sounds for us and @growlands who did all of the art).
This time around we decided to add an extra challenge to the jam, we wanted to see if we could make the game mobile friendly, and I think we did alright. Leave us a comment and let us know what you think.
The web player works, but we recommend the Android version for the best hand feel, a link to the play store is available on the game page (don't worry its the same apk available on the itch page, the submission apk).
It's a smal word, win the first race of your life!
My Team:
@erick - Programer and 2D GameArt
@schneider-souza Sounds Like a Boss!
I'll start by going over a few aspects of this particular compo, and then cover what went well and what went wrong. Play the game here.
I'll be honest: I voted against "A Small World", for the simple reason that that it is way too similar to the theme of LD #23, "Tiny Planet". I briefly considered making a sequel to my LD #23 entry, which I would have called "Space Imperator II". This just seemed too creatively bankrupt however, so I decided to find something else. I eventually settled on the idea of a racing game where the player raced around on a small planet, probably from pole to pole. Racing games are one genre I have never done in the LD, so it seemed nice to try something new.
Unreal Engine 4 uses PhysX which I guessed isn't designed to allow vehicles to drive on the bottom of things. My initial tests confirmed this: disabling gravity and using a radial attractor to simulate gravity prevents vehicles from getting any traction. Eventually I was able to find an odd hack: If you leave gravity on, but add an extra force to all objects which negates it, vehicles work. However, I still suspect that the cars have better handling on the "top" of the planet rather than the "bottom". Either way, it isn't all that noticeable (hopefully).
I did have time to implement my original idea, and even throw in an extra level. The cars turned out how I expected, and I think each has its own distinct flavor.
I'm not a very good 3D artist, but UE4 has the ability to make my mediocre models look decent, at least. There is a problem with lighting, as the engine isn't designed to have objects lit and shadowed on all sides.
I set up the top-view of the planet at the very start, as a simple render-to-texture. Considering how long it took to make, I think it really improved the look of the game and emphasized the planetary aspect of the game.
This is usually a weak spot for me, but I'm fairly happy with how it turned out. I recorded my electric range hood and used that as the engine noise, which worked well with the simulated RPM in the vehicle system. For the collisions, I used a slowed down version of me hitting butter knives together. The rocket engine sound is made in Bfxr.
As for the music, I made about 10 tracks in Abundant Music with a tempo of 300-350 and a synth as the lead. After I'd made about 10, I got one I really liked, although it's only about 88 seconds long.
My past experiences with writing vehicle AI were not very encouraging. The only vehicle AI I've ever written is the fairly stupid AI that drives the other vehicles in my LD #32 entry. Even then, it only had to worry about what is essentially a 2D plane with no obstacles. I got fairly lucky here in that my first idea worked out pretty well. The AI chooses the next destination, either as the next checkpoint, or from a numbered set of waypoints that precedes each checkpoint. It then projects everything onto a plane perpendicular to a line drawn from the center of the planet. It then takes the dot product of the vector to the destination and another vector that faces off to the left, and uses this to determine steering. As the AI gets more on course, the dot product decreases and the AI increases its maximum speed. It also decreases maximum speed as it approaches the destination.
The result, while not particularly smart, can actually beat me on occasion, which I think is good enough.
The UE4 vehicle system is very complex. This is good in that it models stuff like engine RPM and transmissions, but it's bad in that there are a ton of things that can go wrong. I spent about 5 hours trying to export vehicle models as skeletal meshes from Blender, before giving up and using the same technique I used in LD #32: I just used the default car skeleton and attached wheel and body static meshes to it.
The idea crystallized right off the bat, but the name didn't. Here are the names I rejected, from my notes: World Wide [Racer?], Equatorial Race, World Wide Circuit, Pole to Pole, Race the World, Race to the Poles, Circle the Globe, Globetrack, Ground Orbit, Planetary Challenge, Planetary Circuit, Polar Circuit, Polar Track, Planetary Speedway, Celestial Speedway, Solar Speedway, Speedway Planet, Latitude Circuit, Great Circuit, Extremely Low Orbit, Polar Speedway
Final testing on my laptop revealed that the game runs poorly on low-spec machines even though it doesn't look all that good. I think the problem is the subdivision surfaces I used on the cars, which add a ton of largely redundant polygons.
Yet again the HTML5 export failed to work flawlessly. It looks like the problem is that UE4.15 won't compile the PhysXVehicle plugin into a HTML5 build, and I'm not completely sure why. UE4.16 doesn't seem to have this problem, so my only option was to build 4.16 from source. There were a couple other issues around lighting and weird model distortion, but I do have a HTML5 build up now, with only one bug that doesn't exist in the Win32 version: for some reason, the car's wheels are rotationally 1 frame behind the body. This is only noticeable when the car is spinning at high speed, so hopefully it'll only come up rarely.
All in all, it was an enjoyable experience. See you all in LD #39!
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/the-tiny-astronaut
The universe is collapsing. Every lifeform has fled to the last habitable planet… where
Qwer City still stands.
Enjoy this frenetic & frustrating mix of arcade/tower defense.
ALL content was made from scratch, including soundtrack.
For best performance install it, runs slow on Gamejolt.
Entry: Qwer City
Statera - Achieving Peace and Balance through Violence
If there is a problem regarding the mac version , please give a feedback since i have no way of testing the mac version of this game because I don't own a mac or know a friend who owns one.
Game Link: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/statera
just wanted to let you know that a web version of my narrative game Six Degrees of Separation Between me and the Party is now available on Newgrounds. It's a post jam version with some addisional polish added (see release notes for details).
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/692649
Check it out here! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/infinite-planet
Guys! Check out our decision simulator!
You play as a floating space panda which is being colonized by small snails. You have to control the population and decide your faith. There are 6 endings in game, can you find them all? :)
Game page: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/colonized-panda
Ever dreamt of being an alien and able to abduct people from earth? Me neither but why not give it a try :)
HERE: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/its-a-small-world-and-its-gonna-get-smaller
First LD entry~ enjoy :)))
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/finitely-big
You should try to escape the time loop. Pixel art
Controls: Arrows
Space: jump
Download : https://www.dropbox.com/s/xiga5h5hkj9ef9d/Time%20Loop%20%5BLD%2338%5D.exe?dl=1Hi, meet our team! My name is Denis and this is my girlfriend Sasha.
This is our first time at Ludum Dare and we are really excited to present the rough version of the game of our dream YOSILand inspired by "Reigns" by Nerial and Devolver and "Inside Out" by Pixar about the hard craft of ruling your inner land of six races and keeping them in piece and prosper. All in a nice cell-paper style! :smile:
Initially I wanted to do all by myself and take part in the Compo, but in the process I realized I won't manage to do it without help. So Sasha offered help and I gladly accepted. She worked on most of the text and great support while I was doing coding and art :-) So two of us, we created this thing totally from scratch (except for free piece of music for the theme) in 72 hours.
It was a hard time, but we managed. Of course, the game does not include everything we wanted and the balance is not ideal and so on and so on. But we really hope to continue working on this thing and with your support this will be much easier to do. So you are very welcome to comment and vote for us! Thanks everybody, and thanks for such a chance to try our best at this!
Best wishes!The game is nowhere near finished, but an early concept. I hope to polish and finish this game as I really like the whole feel of the game when I was creating assets for it. You can find it here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/a-very-small-planet
Wrote up a quick postmortem on my blog of what went well and what didn't when making my compo entry Rickshaw World.
I will play the game as long as it is on windows and under 200 mb
Please check out my game also: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/statera
I had previously heard of the Ludum Dare from friends, but it seems I only ever heard about it either while in progress or after it was over. This time around I had the good fortune of hearing about the dare 2 days before. This was great but it also meant that I didn't schedule it for my weekend. I have two smallish children and prior obligations, including swimming class and a kids birthday party. At first I was thinking I wouldn't have anytime to participate and that I had no chance of putting together a complete game. Thankfully I decided to give it a whirl anyway and just have fun with it. Little did I know I'd be able to put together a pretty decent game. to be continued ...
Hello,
I just uploaded version 1.2 of my game ( https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/icarus-isolation ). In this version I fixed some bugs (details below), added mouse control and added some extra rings in the air to help with learning the controls. If you want to judge my LD entry, you should check out version 1.0. Version 1.2, however, is an overall better game so I advise you play that version instead.
The following bugs were fixed: - Collecting crystal while in the sky (this could result in a hardlock) - The permanent top down camera bug - collision bugs - minor bug fixes
I was able to compile a working HTML version for my entry. It hasn't under gone intensive testing, but seems to work as well as the Windows build.
Small Kingdoms is a (very) simple, turn-based strategy game that plays on only a 5x3 grid. Your goal is the destroy/capture your opponents base using your race's hero.
Hey guys!
our first Ludum Dare entry "Daily Routine" is now available for Linux and Mac plattforms. Please report us any bugs you may find.
If you want to check it out you can click here!
Also we took the plunge and you can now find us on Twitter
We wish you a merry christmas!
I've added a web browser version at itch.io of my LD38 game "Saviour" to make it easy for you all to try it (you don't need to download and unrar it anymore). Just visit the link to the windows download in my game entry and there you'll find the browser version ;)
The entry for my game is: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/saviour
PS: The game remains exactly as it was in the original submission.
Hey guys, I just can't wait for the judging to start. This is my first game jam and I really want some feedback.
So, please check out my game Conquery and tell me how it is... What can I improve? Are the mechanics fun? Just tell me whatever you feel!
Conquery is a top-down 2d adventure game which can run in any good desktop browser so you won't have to download anything.
I am not a beginner at programming. I am pretty decent at it in fact. But I have never completed a game before. Which does not mean that I never programmed one. I made dozens of unfinished games. But after Ludum Dare I can proudly say that I now have one, more or less, finished game. It did not turn out like I wanted it to be. It should be a puzzle game about rotating the building you are in. Over time it become a sort of puzzle jump and run game. What I really learned here was, that you can say what your game is and programm it like that, but you cant really controll what it turns into when someone plays it. My ideas were fun (to me) and pretty solid. It took just one person to show me, that a simple idea could provoke a glitch. Normally I am really good at making something stable. I at least thought that. I have a lot to learn, yet I am proud of what I did. Even if it didnt turn out like I wanted it to be. But it was my first Jam, so thats ok :)
I have no access to a Mac export module for Game Maker, so if you have the time and resources (it surely can't take very long), would you make a Mac port for me, and link to it in the comments of my game page? I will download and re-upload the file so you don't have to host it, and a credit will be placed on the game page by the download.
Thanks!
Play it here.
Thanks for reading the walkthrough! This walkthrough assumes you have downloaded the game and are familiar with the controls.
From the main menu screen, press X to start. From there, you will be taken to an options menu, which you can control with the up/down arrows. Here is a breakdown of the menu:
1. Options
1. Controls
From this menu you can remap the keys used to control the game. NOTE: You cannot map two functions to the same key. Once you change the action key, that will be the key used to select menu options. Up/Down to control the cursor cannot be changed. TODO
2. Sound
From here you can use the left and right arrows to set the FX and music volumes. I recommend music set at 50 and FX set at 100 for best experience (with headphones).
3. Fullscreen
This is useless as the windowed mode resizes to your screen size. TODO
4. Back
* Returns to the main screen of the menu.
2. Quit Game
* Um, it quits the game...
3. Play
* Hold shift on this option to skip the intro 'cutscene.'
This one is fairly simple (though it's one of the harder 'puzzles'). Cycling through the hints with Z (or whatever you mapped Action 2 to), we can see that the beach town has treaties with both of the other cities (which hate each other). Thus, if those cities were placed next to each other, they would fight until they either made peace or destroyed each other.
NOTE: There is a one in four chance they will make peace instead of blowing up. Try to really get world peace!
You may have noticed in the upper left corner your Global Havoc Level. This increases every time something explodes, you pick up a city, or something else bad happens. If the Havoc Level reaches its max (i.e, 50/50), you get a game over. Every time a mission is completed, the Havoc Level goes down by 5 or 10 points, depending on the mission.
One of the hints in this mission is a little confusing: The alien tracking systems can't see through wool.
What?
Well, this is definitely unnecessarily complicated, but dress pants are traditionally made of wool or polyester. Looking closely at your player character, his pants are creased, hinting that they might be dress pants. Thus, if you pick up a city, it goes in your pocket, and the aliens can't find it.
Way too complicated.
NOTE: Once you pick up a city, the aliens who have targeted it will choose another target, and it is safe to put the city down immediately. Once an alien's target has been changed five times, it will explode.
NOTE: It may be that you will beat this mission immediately by having already placed the desert city by water, in which case the mission will change to the next one.
This mission is simple. Put the desert city by an ocean (but not all the way in it, or you lose instantly) to win.
NOTE: It may be that you will beat this mission immediately by standing where Gort appears, if so, the mission will change to the next one.
This is even easier. Just run over Gort. He usually appears by the industrial city.
Oh no! Professor Lichtenbachensteinenbaum is trying to drain the ocean! Pick up his pump to destroy it.
6. Give Markus the pug a new home.Can't find the pug? Try the panda (that's what I've been told it looks like). From there pick one of the cities to give him to.
The desert city will eat him.
He will get lost in the industrial city.
The correct answer is the beach town.
The city built a shrink ray, just try to pick it up to activate it.
Fin.Thanks for reading!
Text animation skipping (a highly requested high end feature!) and 100% less (known) typos! That is the new version made out of.
Play it here, many a platform supported.
Hey all,
We have made the Shrink game source code available (Unity 3D) for anyone that wants to tinker around with it. Its an average platformer base, but its got nice little features to handle collision of small high speed objects and managing multiple puzzle elements within the scene. I tried to annotate as much as I could during the jam.
GitHub: https://github.com/Raudaschl/smallworldgame
Alternatively just play the game - https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/shrink-1
Looking forward to Sunday Judging and getting some feedback :thumbsup:
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So this happened apparently... Don't watch it, try playing yourself! (Web + Windows) https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/space-hummus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIGzPchgnJk
I would like to be able to sort games by Compo and Jam. Any way we can get that implemented?
How do you change your profile picture? I've seen 3 accounts with custom images already.
Thankfully, my first Ludum Dare jam entry was completed on time. Just waiting for judging to begin, trying out others' amazing games till then, great work everyone! Try my game Island Guard. Have fun! Hope all of you learned something from this Ludum Dare. Put your game in comments, I will try my best to check it out!
