Earliest i've ever posted this. Usually I use the standard Unity/Blender/Photoshop etc. but, I might, just maybe try something different. I'm thinking about a html5 game engine like Phaser. I figure I could probably learn what I need to know in the next 8 days. Then again I might come up with a 3d game idea I really like and go back to Unity. Only time will tell!!!

Found the way. Thanks

Been a Unity user for 3 years but I'm learning Godot right now and I will use it this coming Ludum Dare. Hope that I will be able to finish whatever game I'll be making!

I am planning on spending as much time as I can making a game this time. I will be on my own, with less preparation then I had hoped learning Lua, Love, and its libraries, and I expect to have numerous distractions throughout the weekend. However! I will try.

Hi all, it's been a while since I did one of these, it was on the old site actually. Anyway, I'm back, and I can't wait to take part! I'm not very familiar with this site layout, so please contact me on Twitter (@JackWillTweet) if I need to take any further steps to apply for this Ludum Dare. I wouldn't want to miss it for the world!

I'm in for the fifth time ! Hope I will be better than previously ! Objective : more than 3.5/5 ! I will use LWJGL 3, gimp 2.8 and FL studio 12 ! Badly, I will only have 20 or 25 hours max because of important things I have to do. But anyway, I will do my best :)

If you want, you can check my oldest entries :) http://www.gamejolt.com/@mathiouza

See you there !

I'll admit, I selected YES a lot more at the start than I did at the end. There's always kind of a transformation from being a wide-eyed, enthusiastic potential-seer to a tired old cynic who wants to open a bottle every time the same old gimmick-theme comes around. :smile:

My (intended) method of selection mostly revolves around whether the theme idea gives me a sense of opportunity. If synapses start firing off, I'll click yes, even if it's a game mechanic or a restrictive topic. In truth, I usually prefer restrictive themes, in any case. Maneuvering within a restriction is kinda fun to me, while a very open theme gives me no clear direction. But that's all pretty personal.

Next up, workflow warmups. :grinning:

Hello! This is my first ever Ludum dare, so I'm still finding the ropes, but hopefully everything will go smoothly, and I'll submit my game in time. I'm not particularly good at programming, so I'm using Unity, and I'm going to use Gimp for my graphics because I'm a cheapskate who doesn't want to fork out the money for photoshop :P

Well, that's all from me, Good luck to everyone else!

I thought I was being kinda harsh. Maybe not given some of the other comments here lol. Looking forward to seeing which themes make it through to the next stage!

On team news, I now have a small number of newer participants who might work with me. I still will likely do the bulk of the work but they all seem like they could support in some way. This will be exciting, because it's my first time leading a team for LD. Many years ago I participated in a team, and I did LD38 solo. If anyone has advice for me I'd love to hear it! :)

I've been nice!

The last few times I've been struggling to really participate the Compo, for several reasons. One might have been not feeling it on the weekend and also I wasn't much into the theme that was chosen.

I'm hyped for the coming Dare though and hoping for a decent theme getting voted for!
Sadly the Compo starts at 3 AM here in Germany, so most likely I'll have a good nights sleep and wake up fresh in the morning, instead of lurking until the night.

Definitely I have to organize myself a bit better and make some kind of rough work plan/schedule.

As for the Tools I will use:

Game Engine: Unity3D (C#) or Godot (GDScript)
2D Graphics: Photoshop, Pyxel Edit
3D Graphics: Blender
Audio: Mixcraft, Audacity
Editor: Visual Studio (Code)
Source Control: GitHub (Git)
Organisational: Trello
Screen Capture: OBS (to Twitch) (Not sure if I live stream yet.)

Well then, I'm currently slaughtering my way through the themes and will hopefully see you all around next weekend!

This is my first Ludum Dare ever! I made a bunch of 'scrap games' and stuff before but never finished any project. I think Ludum Dare will help me out! Gamemaker 2 is my engine and i might be doing a Compo.

Please change my User name form "ravi058989" to "ravi05989". Thanks in advance :)

I am too lazy to fill out more, since im writing this on a phone..

As someone has already mentioned earlier (sorry, cannot find the reference), theme should be chosen carefully and we should actually think about how would LD look like with that particular theme. There are thousands of participants, so we need to have thousands of different games. Imagine how boring it would be if we will have to play "Jumping Guy Shooting" thousand times.

So now imagine having theme like "One Room" (I think it's from last year) where you can do anything with one room. You can make horror game, or a farming strategy or use it abstractly, where won't be any physical room at all. This is a good theme.

Try to avoid too obvious or too shallow themes like: Like Dark Souls, Shooting, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Player is superhero, 1 vs 1,... and so on.

Theme should be more abstract and it should be able to be used for all genres, subgenres, and types of gameplays. So themes like: The other side, Life, Civilisation, Small World (from last year), Nature...

I know these examples are too short and abstract, but I hope you get my point.

The event is drawing closer, and it is time for preparations, so I wanted to put down some notes on how I plan to manage my time during this LD. Those might look like pieces of advice, and you are free to use them as such, but in reality those are just notes. They might not even work for me.

1. Chomp the chunks. The Game Jam format is wonderful, because it offers you a strict deadline. And setting deadlines is a huge part of Time Management. Having a start there is wonderful, but this is only a starting point. Now we need to plot this time we have as a timeline and chomp it into chunks. Firstly - plot the time you need to sleep. Then add a couple breaks for eating, and going for a walk - you'll need those to keep your productivity up. If you have other obstructions that you know will take your time - plot them on the timeline as well. Now you are left with the time you can actually spend on the game. But since the development is not a homogenous process, split this time into 3 chunks: Plan, Prototype and Polish. Those are going to be the main stages your development process. My plan is to spend 6 hours in planning, about 4 more in Prototyping (yep, that might look like not much, but more on this below) and about 3-4 hours of Polish on Saturday. Sunday is Polish all the way. This is about it for planning before the event. But all those time chunks need to be chomped into even smaller partitions each having a smaller task that needs to be completed. And if those tasks end up being too big - they will still need to be cut into even smaller chunks. In theory your plan should end up having no task that would take you longer than 5 minutes to complete individually. But in reality, I will stop partitioning if the tasks are about 20-30 minutes each.

2. Planning Stage This is probably the main stage of the process. And this is why is plotted to take almost half of the Saturday. Obviously this stage includes thinking up the idea. Or several ideas. And possibly some basic asset creation. And a lot of time allocation. But most importantly - the end of this phase means that there is no turning back from current game idea. At the end of planning stage I am committed to the game I am making, and so I must be sure that I can pull it off. In order to assure this I will do something like this:

   • Imagine a game.
   • List all assets required to pull it off.
   • Split all assets into 2 groups: Essential and Cosmetic. Essential assets are something that is required for the game to function. Imagine the game without this asset. Can it work? Sure it will be less of a game anyway but will it still be a game? If yes - than the asset is not Essential.
   • Split the Essential assets into Familiar and Experimental. Experimental assets are the ones I am not sure I can build. Not to the point of "not having a clue how to handle it" - having those on the list would meant the idea needs to be scrapped... or at least modified not to require them. I need to have a rough idea how to make it, but I am not comfortable estimating how long it would take me to build. All those assets must be done by the end of planning phase. And if there are too many - down the trash bin they go.
   • Evaluate time and the amount of experiments and if you can fit in. If no - what would be more feasible - down-scope this idea?
   • If necessary - start over.

3. Prototyping Stage By the beginning of this stage I should have a number of assets prepared and a comprehensive list of things to build. This means that at every stage I can focus on executing limited tasks, rather than wasting my mental capacity on reevaluating what to do next. The only thing to consider - reserve some time towards the end of the process on "Assembly" - making sure the assets work together as a game.

4. Keep calm and carry on. Once the prototyping stage is over, I will have a piece of mind knowing that I have something to publish already. And on top of it I will have list of potential improvements. And if I end up not implementing some of those - not a big deal. This will not ruin the game anyway...

Finally I've done the Theme Slaughter! :)

I kept only the 8% of them... Am I a little bit too selective? Basically I kept only themes that were not too restrictive and not focused on one genre.

I have some advice about the theme selection

Maybe @pov or @sgstair find something usefull to insert in this list. If you have other advice post them into the comment. :) - Merge repeated themes: Maybe before starting the slaughter round, lower case all the themes and merge the ones that match. In this way we don't need to vote 3300 themes (but maybe something like 2800) and maybe we will have less scattered votes. Also Instinctively I noticed that I slaughtered some duplicated entries. - You should not be able to vote your own theme. - Make edit possible: Sometimes I slaughtered a good theme by mistake with no way to edit it. - Hide buttons after put a vote and then wait the response from the site before re-enable them: With my smartphone I clicked 3/4 times on the button because of a non response of the LD site... and after that I noticed I voted by mistake 4 themes. - Insta-ban Snow/Christmas theme (joking lol). - A badge when you vote them all: Maybe a reward will push more user to vote all the themes.

BTW I'm in for LD40!

I'll be hosting a local jam in my mountain house with other two devs. I don't know if we will join the jam individually or as a team... we will see!

This will be my 4th Ludum Dare, yay! I hope to release something! XD

Good luck to everyone! :D

- havana24 (http://twitter.com/hav24)

I haven't done an LD since LD30. Are "I'm in" posts still a thing?

...anyway, I'm in. :D

This is my sixth LD. Let the games begin.

I've wanted to join in for a long time, but I never have the whole weekend to work on it. I don't this time either, but I have 29 hours of it, so we'll see what I can accomplish!

I'm pretty jazzed about the Godot Engine right now, so I'll be using that.