I'm not exactly an expert in this sort of thing, but I have some things I've picked up on from my past two jams.

-First, if you're having trouble with an idea, make some base game. If you want to do Top-down, but don't know how to tie in the theme, don't worry about it until the base engine is made. It might come to you as you're making, and even if it doesn't, you'll have something to mess with.

-Next, if you're stuck with making something, move on. Ask someone (I use r/gamemaker for all of my questions, since I use GameMaker Studio 2, I know similar subreddits exist for unity and probably construct and other popular engines), and then do something else. Maybe make some art or music, or program a different aspect of the game. A fresh look is always helpful.

-Also, give yourself a few hours of extra time in your planning (BTW you should have a good estimate of how long your idea will take to cone to fruition) for technical difficulties or extra features. Everyone gets stuck, so don't feel any pressure from getting a wee bit hung up on a certain aspect of the game.

-Finally, I would recommend submitting the game about a half-hour early, just for that extra bit of technical troubleshoot time if your export goes haywire or something (this jam maybe less so, since there's a built-in hour, but still).

We have less than 24 hours until we start, so good luck to all of you, and I hope to play all of your games come Monday afternoon (for me because school)

Hexbit Studios is in this time around! We're excited to be taking part! Can't wait for this weekend!

After a year from LD40,I finally get some time to participate my 2nd LD. Wish everyone have a lot of fun in LD.

My first Ludum Dare!!! Very excited to see what's going to happen :smiley:

Sorry to be a bummer less than a day before the jam launch, but this straw poll has been bothering me all day. I'm not a great programmer, artist, or gifted in any other way... one of my jams, I broke top 100 for humor and I brag to anyone willing to listen. Some categories I do slightly better than 50 percentile, some I do worse. I'm middle of the road, so I don't even care that a select few people are trying to preemptively prepare for the jam 1-2 days early, getting a "leg up on me".

In the U.S., about half of the States have a law that you can't take a photo of how you voted in an election. Even Justin Timberlake was fined for doing so, the fear is it's a way to provide evidence to someone who's bought your vote. While that's obviously not the case here, I think the point is the same, and that is that the event holds a certain integrity, and some people are trying to bring it down.

I know there's other ways to get prepared ahead of time, such as designing a game for every theme in the final round, but somehow this poll, which isn't even statistically significant, has really gotten to me. I wouldn't appreciate being a bad runner and having 5% of the other marathon runners starting a mile ahead though it wouldn't have much of an impact on me, and I also don't appreciate people trying to work around the intention of the jam.

this is my first LD ! I've been looking forward to this for years ! and I'd like to add more chinese elements to my Game!

my gf ask me to add this : There will be no panda although they're cute.

I've re-familiarized myself with Pico-8's music software by recreating Ozzy Osbourne's "Crazy Train."

Here we go!

Hey there anyone who's reading this! I've never been a part of this contest before but am excited to see what happens!

Hi! I am new to this Ludum Dare, so I am exited as ever to start work!

I'd somehow convinced myself that the competition was next week. Imagine my surprise when I happened to check the website this evening.

Oh well, at least I have an excuse for my lack of preparation this time...

I have always said I want to do LD everytime it comes around and never do. This time wont be that case. I plan on working with Pyxel Edit and most likely will be Udemy. I am really excited for LD also I've been working on my pixel art since its the first time I have really done it. Some examples of what I've been making

https://github.com/HybridEidolon/love2d-vore-template

it's under contrib/tinyx

from doc/SystemReload.md:

SystemReload can be used to automatically reinitialize systems during runtime. It works by checking a set of file paths on an interval for updates, and rerunning a lua chunk that exports a function for setting up world systems. It requires the lua require path be unmodified from love2d's default.

Bootstrapping your world in main.moon:

world = tiny.world!

initSystems = require 'initsystems'
initSystems world

Inside initsystems.moon:

(world) ->
  SystemReload = require 'tinyx.SystemReload'
  systemInitModule = 'initsystems'
  moduleRoots = {'systems', 'tinyx', 'sub.path'}

  worldddSystem (SystemReload systemInitModule, moduleRoots)

Your systems' internal state will be destroyed on reload. This is vitally important to understand; you should never assume onAdd/onRemove will only ever be called once or a given entity at runtime, because the systems themselves get recreated. If you need things to only happen once, store that information on the entity itself.

Second, do not store references to systems or system data inside your entities' components. This will easily break hot reloading at runtime. You need to make sure that whatever is used to index system-specific data is only stored as a handle or index that can be recreated by that system; alternatively, on the system's removal, delete those handles so that the next version of the system can recreate them. If there is data that should persist between reloads, is not pure Lua data, and isn't tied to a specific entity (e.g. an asset manager), store it on the world object because the world itself will persist between reloads.

For example: instead of storing an Image directly in an entity for use by your system that handles rendering, store the string path to that resource in the entity, have a system manage loading that asset into a world-global asset manager, then index into the asset manager in the render system when looking at that component again.

Essentially, you need to make your systems as functionally pure as possible, and stick any transient state into the world itself.

Bonus: if you keep your systems pure and entities pure-data, you can create systems that manage unique IDs for each entity. You can then have references to other entities in such a way that saving your game state for debugging becomes as simple as serializing a table of every entity table in your world.

Last ludum dare I didn't rate many games, but I'm going to this time!

I had a fairly successful LD 42 - I haven't finished the game I started for that one yet, but I actually pulled it out and did a little bit of work this morning as a way of getting my brain started for the day.

Last time around I did a very detailed blog with all my game making wisdom. If you'd like the short version of that, I wrote up a separate article on my personal blog that deals with the basic idea: Coherency. The article gives you a framework for testing your game ideas(or any other creative things) before you get into the weeds of making it, and I have gotten a lot of positive feedback about it.

In my last game I used PICO-8, and had a good experience with it. But I am actually starting on my own fantasy console now, Galapagos. It is early enough in the going that I have nothing released and only a few locked down specs, but LD is an unmissable opportunity to give it a workout. Here's what I would call a pre-announcement announcement to give you an idea, though half of this stuff I haven't even gotten to yet or is littered across little prototypes and not in the working codebase:

• Based on three broad principles to set goals and constraints:
  • Sustainable design: what would a lasting, energy efficient console look like? How could I make it so that tooling made for the console is reusable by others?
  • Linear paradigms: make the workflow very directed start-to-finish instead of jumping around, with visual metaphors to match, use list data structures, etc. Aim for linear expansion of game scope, instead of Moore's law doublings.
  • Evolutionary tradeoffs - you can install "modules" to add a degree of customization, but instead of being able to "max out" the system, you have a total constraint on how many modules/which types of modules you can use, hence the name "Galapagos" - explore different evolutionary tradeoffs along a spectrum.
• Coding:
  • Both Javascript and Web Assembly programs are supported. I haven't gotten to the latter yet.
  • Some APIs for the requisite matrix/vector math etc. included
  • Various CPU, memory, and program size limits will be enforced(still unspecified) to meet the sustainability principle. Modules can be used to expand these limits.
  • Galapagos runtime is implemented in Go, using "raylib-go" for most I/O and "beep" for audio.
• Graphics:
  • Smallest mode: 480x320, 4 colors palette in classic "amber monochrome" style (I might add more modes with wider and smaller aspect ratios)
  • Biggest mode: 640x480, 16 colors palette(customizable RGB; extends the 4-color default to green/amber with some additional hues) with built-in support for color fades. A size that is comfy for 80-column coding and lets you make PC-98 style graphics.
  • 40 and 80 column monospace bitmap fonts using UTF-8 codepoints between 0-255, i.e. enough to edit Unicode documents while not necessarily rendering them properly.
  • Some support for immediate mode drawing functions and common geometry operations - 2D and 3D shapes, scaled sprites, and others. More like a scenegraph than a traditional framebuffer system. (These APIs might be pushed into modules, so that you can experience more "from scratch" and "weird hack" coding.)
• Audio:
  • A small "beeper" style oscillator by default, with a few preset timbres. Spend modules to get more voices.
  • PCM sample oscillator module so that the game can announce "YOU WIN" and play orchestra hits
  • Plaits macro-oscillator module for high fidelity and experimental sounds, voice synthesis, etc.
  • Programmable synth envelopes, advanced modulation possibilities etc. - design still WIP
  • Music Macro Language for small tunes and SFX, in the future most likely a music tracker
• Tools/Formats/IDE:
  • Built-in code editor and JS REPL.
  • "Softcard" system that stores everything in a sectioned UTF-8 document. Cards can contain arbitrary(textual) data.
  • Additional editors can be written as softcard programs, and broadcast their compatibility with softcard chunks for automatic usage.
  • Softcard programs can communicate with each other with a Plan-9 style "expose everything as files" strategy. This will appear in visual form as a set of cards progressing left to right, with the earlier ones able to send to the later ones.

palette tests

WIP 40-column font based on Hack

Anyway, what I do during LD will probably be extremely simple, more like a tech demo than a fully designed game, and only use a fraction of all these features. But it'll be good to try to get to a first release.

11... holy moly! I'm looking forward to it.

Same ol' toolchain as ever:

• Engine: Unity 2018.whatever
• IDE: Visual Studio 2017
• Graphics: Adobe Photoshop
• Sound: Cockos REAPER, Chiptone, some synths and guitar
• Source Control: GitHub

One thing that's gonna be interesting is that about a month ago I switched from using a mouse to a trackball, and haven't had much experience doing graphics work with it. I also imagine I'll have to keep my ol' mouse handy to try out the game play that way.

So Im not 100% sure what Im getting myself into but I said I would do this so I better see it through to the end.

I have always loved the idea of making games but could never find the motivation to do anything for very long. So after messing around with game development off and on for about a year I figured I had to do something about this. I had to stop beating around the bush and just dive head first in. Sink or Swim. So for 72 hours were I will sit down and just make a game. I will be given a theme and then need to some how make something based off that in 3 days. I am both nervous and excited. I will be using Unity as thats all I know how to use. I hope this goes well : )

These themes really suits my fascination with AI and Evolution. Automation for AI, Evolve and Everything Grows for 'you know what', and Absorb your enemies for the integral game mechanic.

Hi, pretty excited for my first ever jam. For this jam, I'll be using Unity as I've been working on it since last 6 months. As an amateur game developer, it was always fun to watch Youtubers create games in such a short time. After all these months, I think I'm ready to give myself an opportunity to create one of my own in the limited time period. Though my lack of proficiency in music production, I'll still try to create some or else for the last opt for free online music. All the best to everyone who're planning to participate. Happy Jamming!