Come to say hi! https://www.twitch.tv/siraeron
if you want to submit me a game you can in this form: https://goo.gl/forms/Z5MhQaNUZ01lCTEf1 i'll try to play it in stream and give you my feedback on it!
Way of the Dodo is the LD43 entry by Chris McMath and me!
An invading force has discovered the island of the last dodos. Sacrifice fellow dodos to save the species! And can you rescue all of the eggs?
Play it here and let us know what you think!.
Read on if you'd like to find out a little bit more about how we came up with this little platforming experience / tribute to a tragically extinct bird.
Whilst I was en route to join Chris for the jam, we swapped ideas based on the theme via text. Once I had crossed Bristol, we had enough ideas to fill a whiteboard (with what unfortunately turned out to be a permanent marker). Too many, really. But we kept coming back to a particular Mario move that Chris had remembered - the sacrifice of Yoshi in Super Mario World. This ‘exploit’ of sorts is described in detail here. Essentially, if Mario is riding Yoshi and seems unlikely to make it across a chasm, he can launch himself from his dino pal and gain some more height. In the process, poor Yoshi plummets into the abyss.
➚ Mario and Yoshi, in happier times.
We decided this would the central mechanic of our game. Chickens seemed like an option. As flightless creatures, perhaps they could traverse levels better by teaming up as stacked pairs - we envisaged them gliding across great gaps with their doubled wing-power. But then, cruelly kicking away the lower hen whilst in this form, Yoshi-style, they could reach the level's higher platforms. The ultimate double-jump, and the ultimate sacrifice.
Before long (after a brief penguin detour) we had pivoted to a more interesting, more extinct sort of flightless bird - the dodo!
➚ A dodo, as rendered by Frederick William Frohawk for Walter Rothschild’s 1907 book Extinct Birds.
Adorable, doomed, and as far as I know, never before the star of a colourful platformer. If we can have blue hedgehogs, why not a hot pink dodo?
Things started to come into focus when we considered the dodo’s historical enemies - the 17th century colonists of Mauritius who introduced numerous predators to their island, and cooked them en masse. Way of the Dodo’s twist on this is that there turns out to be one last island of surviving dodos, and the invaders this time are a robot army - in the future, even colonialism is outsourced. Taking this ahistorical approach neatly allowed us to be as anachronistic as we liked. By the time I was drawing the invading fleet for our title screen, we could imagine a future level in which the dodos storm the enemy warships (think Sonic 2's Wing Fortress Zone).
In the meantime, we very much hope you enjoy our first attempt at a dodo simulator.
Thanks to all at Bristol Games Hub!
Hi guys! You can kill some fruits right now!) You need to sacrifice solders to help grape Princess save a Prince) Not so usual. Right?)
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/for-the-princess
Try our game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/for-brain
Try our game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/for-brain
We were making our game in offline place in Novosibirsk. We decided to make a Russian version for local presentation on the 2nd day, but for LD we had to translate it to English. It was a good experience, I implemented the simplest localization system by 1h, including translation of all UI. In that time our game designer finished writing all quests in 2 languages.
We are rewriting our story, but I want to try to translate "Devil, Please" for popular Europian and Eastern languages after that.
Take some time out, chill and play a simple interactive experience. Then tell us what you think.
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/the-sun-scene
Heyo, that “streamer who obsesses over button feedback” is back for LD43 :D TODAY IS THE LAST DAY ILL BE PLAYTESTING GAMES ON STREAM: https://www.twitch.tv/elysiagriffin
Live from 12PM to 5PM EST :D
If you’d like me to play your game on stream, here’s the Submission Form with rules & guidelines: http://ttv.elysiagriffin.com/ldjam
We've updated the game to fix a bunch of stuff and also add a couple of things we didn't have time to put into the game. Now the games behaves in a much more consistent way!
Bug Fixes: - Fixed a very annoying memory leak that made the game unplayable after 10 minutes. - Fixed a bug that caused enemies to stop responding to the player's vacuum. - Fixed a bug where the jetpack wasn't working consistently. - The music/sfx volume values now work correctly. - The GUI can now be properly navigated with a keyboard/controller. - Added a couple of missing sfx.
Changes: - Redesigned big portions of the map to make them more accesible. - Changed the xbox controllers to a more confortable layout. - Added in-game options. - Added a slider to configure the mouse sensitivity. - Added some info in the pause menu with how many little guys have been put to sleep. - Changed the ending a little so it's not so underwhelming. - Changed the inital conversation to give more information. - Minor spelling errors fixed.
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/what-we-hold-in-our-hearts
Just passed the magic 20 ratings threshold, hooray! If you're looking for a quick running platformer game, I'd love to hear your feedback!
I'll be playing more games this afternoon, leave me a comment below if you have a WebGL game and I'll try to play it! Thanks again!
Some cute Modeling and texturing I made for the ABORTION BOY GAME ! 
Hello everyone, I wonder if I can change commands and include new stages for my game.
I couldn't do more stages because of time.
The players found the game very short. =[
I participated as a Compo.
Are these changes allowed?
Hello everyone, I wonder if I can change commands and include new stages for my game.
I couldn't do more stages because of time.
The players found the game very short. =[
I participated as a Compo.
Are these changes allowed?
Just finished editing all my compo footage down into a single video. I started with about 38 hours left in compo, so I didn't get to polish everything I would have liked. You can check it out below. You can play Blight Tower in your browser here!
https://youtu.be/ExUrm2E2cN0
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/altar-1
Hi there ! Thanks to the awesome feedback we got from the early testers (Thanks again, really), we managed to add lots of new feedback effects, mostly concerning the sacrifice feature.
We also improved greatly the laser firing, which has now a bit more persistence in the world.
If you haven't tried Machine Godz yet, please give it a shot ! All feedbacks are welcome :) And that will let us discover your games too. See you soon and have fun ! Next step is adding all the super cool enemies we have in stock but couldn't implement in time.
Rate the game here : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/machine-godz
Play the game here : https://beardmage.itch.io/machine-godz
Day 0 (Friday 11/30/18):
I began by breaking one of the "rules" that I often come across around here, the one that says that it's unwise to learn a new language or tool during Ludum Dare. But that's what I did, and here's why. For the two previous Ludum Dare competitions, I used LÖVE, a framework written in Lua. While I have a lot of respect for Lua, I decided that this time around I would make a game that is more "ecumenical" — i.e., playable by anyone with a Web browser (ideally). With LÖVE, I only had time to compile for Windows; folks who used Linux and other operating systems would have to compile the source code themselves if they wanted to run the game. That didn't seem right. Also, I didn't like the hassle of generating the executable file from my source code and then being sure to package it with DLL's and so forth. I like to keep such technicalities to a minimum.
So, in the hours leading up to the nine o'clock starting gun, I decided to explore different gaming tools. Fortunately I found a list that concisely compares some of the more prominent HTML5 game development tools out there:
http://html5gameengine.com/
I gave careful consideration to BabylonJS and Construct, but I eventually ruled out both. BabylonJS looks like a great tool for 3D games, but my heart was set on a 2D game, and this tool struck me as overkill. I almost fell in love with Construct, until I learned that it's not exactly free. I don't like being trapped into using software that will eventually require payment, so I ditched that option. There were a few other tools that looked appealing, but I finally settled on PixiJS. It's free and it doesn't require running a Web server on my local machine. The last thing I want to do on Day 0 is install a Web server on a Windows machine. That would probably be a quick descent into misery and frustration. No thanks. Getting PixiJS to work, on the other hand, was a breeze.
When the theme was finally announced, I was a bit disappointed. At best, I had mixed feelings about it. Still, I felt it was general enough to give my imagination free rein, so it wasn't too bad. I just needed a bit of time to mull it over.
Day 1 (Saturday 12/1/18):
I got up early in the morning and started exploring more game ideas in my head, using pencil and paper when needed. The first idea that stuck was something inspired by my previous game for Ludum Dare, Gretchen's Head. For those of you who are fans of this game and remember the story line, the protagonist, Gretchen, is a mother of ten children. My game for Ludum Dare 43 was going to feature the heads of all ten children. Each head would be floating in the sky, and the goal would be to propel as many heads as possible to the top of the screen, which would represent eternal bliss. The player would have to sacrifice some of the heads in order to generate energy that would send the remaining heads upwards.
While the game mechanic fit the theme pretty well, I ran into several snags. First of all, @genie, the creative artist for the game, balked at drawing the heads of ten ugly children (as players of Gretchen's Head may recall, her children are not spellbindingly attractive). Second, the prototype game that I developed using this idea did not seem very inspiring. It seemed challenging enough, but at the same time I felt it was rather bland. That's when I decided to break another "rule" (I guess, for some folks here) and redesign the game. In fact, I didn't decide on the final design until the next day. In the end, I spent most of Day 1 learning how to move sprites around in PixiJS and playtesting the design that would soon be jettisoned.
Day 2 (Sunday 12/2/18):
I woke up early to attend a weekly study group I've been involved with for a while, and then to meditate at a local Zen Center. I wasn't in the mood for either activity, but I felt obligated for various reasons. Then around midmorning, I felt the full weight of the self-doubt that had surfaced the day before. I felt so tired and miserable that I decided to go back to bed until around noon or so. That's when Genie woke me up and gave me lunch. In the afternoon, feeling a little better, I started thinking more about the game design and settled on the idea of having just a single head (which would later be named "Alice") which would float around the screen and gobble things up. I felt that a game that is focused on a single character, rather than a swarm of several heads, would be easier to learn and more fun to play. In some ways, I got this idea from an LD42 game I had played, Cactus Madness! (@yukey0 et al.), which features a single character running around the screen gathering items.
I spent most of this day rewriting the code, although fortunately I was able to keep a good portion of the code I had written the day before. Some basic things like generating sprites and a collision detection function, the latter of which I swiped from a Pixi tutorial by kittykatattack, could be kept. Also, Genie had given me some pretty good sketches for the head, and I felt like the game was finally crystallizing into its final form.
The ideas for the stars, sun, moon, and other elements of the game just popped into my head during development. I suspect that one of the main subliminal influences for these ideas was a music video I have been watching these days, "Fjara" by Sólstafir. Its theme of a lost soul dragging a coffin through the Icelandic wilderness is deeply inspiring.
Day 3 (Monday 12/3/18):
I got off to a bad start on this day. I left a note for Genie about my ideas for the final head drawings and then departed to give someone a ride to a hospital for a medical test. I was gone for 2-3 hours and when I got back, I was tired from all that driving but nonetheless eager to finish the game. I looked at Genie's final head sketches and decided that one of her earlier sketches from Day 1 or 2 was the best. Ironically, this earlier sketch had taken her only a few minutes, while her final head sketches took "two hours" to complete. Needless to say Genie was upset about the wasted effort, but I was able to get her to do a few more sketches based on the earlier draft head. With a bit of tweaking in GIMP, the final result, Alice's head, was ready to be incorporated into the game.
On this day I also taught Genie the rudiments of Bosca Ceoil, and with a little help she was able to compose the end-game music. She was new to music composition, but overall I'm happy with her work. It is not Bach or anything like that, but it is original.
I spent the afternoon and evening playtesting and working out the final details of the game. Fortunately no game-stopping bugs appeared. Even so, polishing the game took up every minute of my time during the final stretch.
Here's the lowdown:
What went well:
What didn't go well:
I fear I have rambled on far too long. I hope there is some useful advice here for y'all.
P.S. here is a link to the game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/stjarna-hofu
I just found the hotel notepad that I scribbled my concept on after the theme was announced. I don't even remember doing it now. But the final game (Farm to Table) turned out pretty close to how I imagined it. Achievement earned!
