Ok guys 2 more days and the week is over we are almos at the 100 ratings we can do it guys

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/drain-2

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/drain-2

When we first started Planet Nanadoo I originally wanted something a bit more Pikmin-ish. It was going to be more about navigating around with these little robots, picking up scattered power cubes and bringing them back. There was going to be a balance between building more little robot dudes and trying to get enough power/resources to build a ship back. Complicated stuff.

Fortunately we started figuring in how long it was going to take to build all of the characters, enemies, backgrounds, et al and realized all of the complications weren't going to fly. We trimmed everything down to just two characters "The Explorer" and "The Locals". Unfortunately there wasn't enough time to make a very elaborate looking base, so I just had to use the regeneration chamber.

When it came to graphics, I called my good friend MarleeZ a few hours too late, to do screens. She was more than happy to jump on it. @Cheldav did the audio for this one (she worked on our previous entry Cosmic Chaos Crunch). We opted to go without voice acting this time to keep the explorer generic. This kinda backfired on me, because I didn't get in a death animation nor sound. So the explorer just kind of disappears.

I made a post Jam version that I want to say is as complete as this game is going to get. Any of the original concept stuff I do for this, may just end up in a sequel. That way there aren't any questions of was there enough time to complete XYZ.

What went right: Even taking a 6 hour break to literally go to another game demo, we managed to get it done. I'm getting faster at doing animations, they're not great but they work quite well. (I think they have a level of adorable I was somewhat aiming for). I got to work with MarleeZ!

What went wrong: Unfortunately the controls weren't as tight as I would've liked them to have been. Unfortunately players wander too much in the dark. I'd like for the beacon to have been clearer. I didn't get all of the animations in in time, so there are small hiccups in gameplay that make you go "???" That darn dot that appears in the center of the screen caused by a light that I've never figured out. >: \

Hello there wonderful developer person!

I heard a rumour that you Ludum Dari (plural?) like making games. We run a partnered server over on Discord called GameDevNetwork for all things gamedev, whether that be in the form of code support, bouncing back story ideas or just sharing your lovely work.

GDN is a friendly, supportive development community that aims to help you become the best developer you can be!

We host monthly(ish) jams with fabulous prizes (by which I mean stickers and PR mentorship, we strictly avoid monetary prizes, we're here for creativity after all!) and love spreading community flair.

We also have a #gamejam channel reserved to contain the intense action of fantastic jams such as Ludum Dare.

Drop by and talk about anything from your Ludum Dare project to what your favourite pizza topping is over here: https://discord.gg/gdn :tada:

I'm also an avid game jammer/hackathoner, feel free to poke me about AR/VR, code things or just some of the cool projects you've worked on :heart:!

Oh hey! we've also got an awesome game jam coming up next month! Check that out here: https://itch.io/jam/game-dev-network-dragon-jam

Hunt for the glory of Ull, the god of winter, in this nordic-themed action game !

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/berzerk-hunt

Your Fury is the only thing that keeps you alive in this harsh environment. How long will you maintain it to survive ? Squash rabbits and fight wild animals using your powerful abilities !

We dearly hope you enjoy our creation. Have fun !

This is a post-mortem for my Ludum Dare game “Fuse Cell” made in 3 days with a competition theme of “Running out of Power”

Play the game HERE

Getting Inspired

As soon as the theme “Running out of Power” was announced, I knew I wanted the experience my players get to not be one of limitations. Running out of power can be interpreted to mean a timer, a finite time window for the player to do something and then the game ends abruptly (figure 1, left). That didn't appeal to me at all, so I immediately felt I needed to give players the ability to re-supply on power so that the game doesn't stop. I also thought passively bleeding energy is one less degree of freedom, so why not give the player control over when they want to spend her energy (figure 1, right). That was the basic shape of interaction I wanted for my main mechanic.

Figure 1

The thought of a recharge mechanic reminded me of Ikaruga with its rule of absorbing same-color bullets to fill up the special gauge. I decided a recharge mechanic would be a kick-ass power to have in a shmup. Bullet hell shmups are always letting players use powerful experimental weapons, plus working within an established genre cuts down on design times, which is ideal for a jam. So, taking the theme and running with it, I determined shooting could be my energy discharge mechanic, and absorbing energy from enemy ships could be my recharge mechanic.

Ikaruga

Crafting the main game mechanic

Veteran game designer and absolute sweetie [Dene Carter] (https://twitter.com/Fluttermind) and the book “Clockwork Game Design” he recommended, have tried hard to impress upon me that fun game design is about: One main mechanic per game (or one per task, for more complex games), which all other mechanics should both reinforce and not contradict A choice, at any given time, between an easy, low-risk action, and a risky but high reward action. Asking what you want the player to feel, and tailoring the rules of the game to create that feeling and experience in the player. My primary game mechanic was established : I wanted the player to feel very limited by her energy supply (figure 2), but also badass because of her ability to recharge.

Figure 2: shooting expends your energy bar

To reinforce the risk of the primary mechanic, I thought I should add a radius to the recharge ability. The direct consequence is that if the player decides to recharge, she will have to get up close to the enemy and suffer the consequences (which were not yet determined). At this point (end of day 1, I think, and still working with abstract graphics) I had made the player’s ship (the black square) extend up to 4 energy tendrils when an enemy (circle) is near. The tendrils follow the enemies until they’re out of the sphere of influence (the semi-transparent circle). This is indication that the player can absorb those 4 enemies as long as they’re connected via energy tendril to the ship (figure 3)

Figure 3 Refining the behavior of the energy tendrils

At that point I hadn’t coded any collision with the player, no way for the player to be damaged, no consequences to using the absorb ability. To further drive the point of risk/reward home, and inspired by my favorite and excellent horizontal shmup ProGear, I decided to implement two things

• Single-hit death from bullets (pretty much a standard for shmups)
• Single-hit death from impact with airborne enemies

Therefore enemy types became:

1. Airborne enemies which kill you on impact Type that shoots bullets Type that doesn’t shoot bullets
2. Land-based enemies (tanks) which do not kill you on impact (because they’re on the ground, away from your ship) These all shoot bullets

Here is the thinking behind this design decision:

Land-based enemies don’t kill you on impact, but also can’t be absorbed to replenish your energy. This means the only way to kill them is by shooting at them, which is the action that depletes your energy. The pieces of the puzzle were starting to fall into place. You’re motivated to kill the tanks because of the deadly bullet spray they unleash otherwise. But in order to kill them, you need to master the absorb ability.

Airborne enemies are the ones you need to absorb energy from. However that poses a risk because you have to go near them. Even those that don’t shoot at you can kill you on impact, so you need to choose your timing and position (more decision-making can mean more involved and more fun gameplay). You can always kill them by shooting at them, but then you’re expending energy and wasting your recharge sources.

Next I decided that a nice visual way to display the absorb ability is to tractor-beam the enemies toward the player’s ship (figure 4). With a “glomp” sound effect. I know, super silly. It’s the reason why I like cartoony art direction: it lets you get away with more experimentation.

Figure 4: Glomp!

Refining the main game mechanic

Next up: the recharge mechanic was working fine, however it felt a bit overpowered. There were no consequences in using it. I wanted to give it something extra to keep it grounded in reality, so to speak. Up to now it was mainly the game design informing the theme. Now it was time for the theme to inform game design: What would be the limits of a super powerful experimental energy-leeching aircraft? How about overloading? Yes, if I could make the absorb mechanic into an “active gun-reloading” minigame that would totally do!

Figure 5: the charge bar!

So enter the charge bar and the rules I made up for this minigame (figure 5):

• Whenever one or more airborne enemies are in range, pressing Action Button 2 makes a charge bar appear. The longer you press, the more the bar fills up. Whenever you release, you get three outcomes depending on its length:

• Teal: you gain a fraction of your energy bar back (less than 100/100). The fuller the bar, the closer to 100 you get
• Orange: you get MAX energy (100/100). Enjoy your feeling of safety!
• Red: you overload, your energy bar becomes red and you can’t shoot for 1.5 seconds. On top of that, your energy becomes 10/100, regardless of what you had before. Ouch!

On top of that, again guided by the shmup genre, I thought I’d implement a super-bomb. Building on the existing mechanic, I guesstimated that a successful MAX recharge twice in a row - which means the player has mastered the absorb ability- would feel good and further the risk/reward. Remember, you have two chances to mess it up. If you successfully make a bomb, this fireball appears, clearing all the bullets on screen and dealing constant damage to all the enemies it touches for 2 seconds (figure 6) When the fireball is done, you’re left with half your energy (50/100) so that you can’t repeat the super-bomb immediately without recharging first.

Figure 6: yes, I wasted an hour making this 3-frame fireball. It still didn’t look destructive enough, but it gives you the general idea

AI

Enemy patterns in bullet hell shmups are an integral part of level design. Up to this point, I had managed to pixel some rough enemies, give them a tiny bit of animation and personality, and had placed them in the level like so:

This is one of the things the Construct 2 editor does brilliantly. I gave the level a passive scroll speed, so it auto-scrolls to the left, and every enemy that enters the screen becomes “Activated”. From then on, it’s about simple trigonometry:

The frog enemies just do a sine up-and-down wave movement. No shooting.

The flying cannons start moving horizontally but every second their angle of motion increases by 8 degrees, which means they eventually leave the screen while moving diagonally and to the left, in a nice arc. They shoot one bullet in the direction of the player every now and then.

I thought, for variety, I’d make some of the flying cannons red, and give them a much more circular path to follow (i.e. an 8 degree increase in their movement angle every 0.1 seconds). I also made them faster. The end result is they appear to aggressively sweep the screen, shoot three bullets, and then retreat.

The tanks are static, moving with the level, but produce a circular bullet barrage (using a loop that runs 36 times, increasing the angle of each bullet by 10 for each loopindex)

I thought enemy hot air balloons would be a nice touch. I made them big and impressive, but their hitbox is limited to only the cannon they carry. Their behavior is straightforward: they go up and fire a three-way shot, regardless of the player’s position. To illustrate this, I used a quick and dirty trick, and just added a second frame with a target on it to the sprite.

BOSS

Again, silliness. I made the rook body invulnerable. You need to shoot its head. I thought the boss could spawn smaller airborne enemies to both kill you and provide a source of energy for your ship, but then I thought I could do one better: I made the Rook shoot huge, slow cannonballs that can kill you and that you can either shoot at or absorb. Problem solved. After you’ve depleted the head’s hefty HP count, you get to the second boss form, a silly tank turret that shoots the same circular barrage as the ground tanks. Once you’re done, there’s a semi-satisfying explosion and you’ve won the game.

Art

I focused on making enemy and friendly fire super visible (fuchsia and yellow respectively) and it seems to have worked well. The few concessions I made to graphics were that I took the time to make: 1. a passable 10-frame explosion. Explosions are super important in shmups.

1. A passable stage background

2. A passable lightning effect animation plus a square wave driving its opacity from 50% to 100% every few milliseconds, so it would flash slightly.

Scoring System:

In support of the main mechanic, I wanted a scoring system that provides for individual players to show some self-expression. Therefore I implemented some hard and fast rules:

• Destroying an enemy by shooting at it or by smart-bomb gives you 10 points.
• Using your absorb ability to destroy a ship gives you twice the score. I.e. you get 20 points per ship you absorb. This is to encourage using the absorb ability and at the same time discourage overusing the smart bomb. Smart bombs are good for dodging hard situations, but bad for scoring.
• Ground enemies can’t be absorbed, so they leave coins instead. If you manage to catch them before they disappear they provide a nice bonus.

These rules might need some tweaking. And probably adding a few zeroes at the end ^-^

Music

I composed in FL studio. I wanted something uplifting and heroic, but not grimdark. Airship themes, marching bands and disco string sections all sort of mashed-up in my head while I lay it out in a hurry. EMU’s old +Symphony.sf2 soundfont is fun for prototyping large ensembles

Sfx

BFXR is an amazing piece of software, due to its presets and customization. But it’s also a fantastic exploration space: if you know how to edit your results a little bit, pressing the “randomize” button a bunch of times can really yield sfx you didn’t even know you needed. It’s like sailing a sea of possibilities and encountering new treasures.

A trick I learnt from Klik and Play (currently Multimedia Fusion) back in the day is: whenever I have a lot of similar sounds going off concurrently, I silence them all before starting a new one. I.e. whenever I sound an explosion, I completely cut off any other explosion sounds (stop all sounds with a tag “explosion”) and then play “explosion.wav” with a tag “explosion” (that’s the way Construct 2 handles sound events) .

Couldn’t implement

1. AZERTY-friendly controls. I know, my friends who use AZERTY keyboards always get the short end of the stick, because I never plan ahead
2. Two player support - during the Jam I fired up MAME and played Detana Twinbee (for research and to unwind). I remembered how awesome the two-player co-op mechanic is in this game. If the two players can manage to position their ships properly, their combined weapon is a lot stronger than the sum of their individual weapons. Sadly I had no time to even think about adding controls for a second player, and my code was spaghetti at this point ^-^’

1. Saving the high-score so you’ll be tempted to try again
2. Advanced bullet patterns. I.e. bullets that slow down, speed up, change course after being fired, etc.
3. A second level. I was completely exhausted and also finished in the nick of time, so one level would have to suffice as a proof-of-concept at least.

Thanks for reading this far.

Play the game HERE

Hello everyone, If you need ratings, please send me a direct link in the comments of this post. Also, it would be cool if you could check my entry in exchange we are close to 40 ratings so maybe we can get them complete!

I would like to invite all of you to play my game: 'Snow Train'. You play as a train driver and it is snowing. Shocking, right! However, driving the train isn't easy. As it happens, you are constantly running out of resources. Forcing you to go outside, with nothing but a gun to protect you... And a axe, but the gun is better... Oh and you also have bucket, but you can't fight with the bucket.

Here is the link if you are interested: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/snow-train

And of course, I can't make a post without a gif!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/breathless-parks-running-out-of-power

Clone Colony is a strategy game with "eXploit, eXpand, eXterminate" features.

You lead a team of clones to extract minerals on a distant planet for the company. However, it's not only mineral & profit waiting for you there, a good bunch of Alien hives are burrowing under the planet surface, and they're not very hospitable. It's a pity that the company cannot provide a transport to get you back due to the profit margin. You are suggested to use everything you have to eliminate the hostile native creatures and keep working for the company's interest.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/clone-colony

If we get 7 more ratings, we would have 51 to be rounded up to 100 :smile:

These 5 were the brainiest that I played:

Each move costs one power. When no power, light goes out. Bat chases. Get gold. https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/powerless-miner

Powerless: Trump Teaches Typing. https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/powerless-trump-teaches-typing

Build a maze to find the exit. https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/thirst

Drive to deliver. Open map drains battery. https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/delivery-drain

Connect waves and compare. https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/ministry-of-synthesis

Update 1.1.1 :

I just made a little Update for my game ! Hope it's better than before.

In this update I made the character's sprite flips, also I made the batteries give you more energy than before ! And that's it !

Test My Game Here

This is my first Ludum Dare! My game is Space Survival. It was made with Godot Engine. I would love to see what people have rated it, whether the ratings are good or bad, but I'm a few votes short! I would appreciate if you voted, and more importantly, gave constructive feedback.

Feedback I've received: * Enemy ships move too fast * Player and lasers move too slow * Difficulty balancing issues

Hey everybody! We're drawing closer to the end of the playing and rating period and I think it is important for everybody to ask themselves a valuable question.

What now?

Some of us have already moved on to new jams, got back to our regular lives, or continued a previous longer term project. All of which involve taking the experience of this jam to grow in some way. There is one other section of us though. Those of us who take what we've made, absorb the good and bad criticism we've received, and move on to make a better experience with the restraints of time and theme no longer on us. I'm sure there are a few people already making plans on how to take their game to a greater level!

I'm the sole creator of the comp entry Dorgus Needs Power (please play it if you haven't)

My goal is to take everything I've learned from this and a few other jams I was recently in to polish my game, fix reported issues, and make a full game. I have a background as an artist so my first goal in all of this is to redo the look of the game now that I'm not hurried to make something playable rather than something pretty and playable.

This was the original sprite for the main player character in my game:

Definitely did the job for the jam but it won't suffice for a more complete project!

If you are an artist than take the time to really work on this and have several revisions. Show alternate versions to friends and don't be afraid to take your time. If you are by no means an artist, make a friend / contract one. I will likely look at my newest draft of my main character multiple times and change things that I see fit to alter many times in the process of making the game, but that is one of the freedoms of taking a jam game to the next level or just starting a larger scale project!

I'll leave on an image of my newly revised version of the player and will link my LD39 entry again because the more feedback the better! Next time, I'm going to break down some game feel fixing!

**Quick note neither image shows two arms because that is a separate image

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/dorgus-needs-power

Hey everyone. Would appreciate it if you guys could play my game and leave me as detailed feedback as possible about
-What you liked the most.
-What you disliked the most. -What you think should be changed (and why) ((controls, gameplay, etc)).
-What you would like to see added to the game (more vehicles, levels, missions)

I want to finish up and polish this game and actually make it my full first release (though ofc it's a small game, even if I add a bunch of things and such it's not really a big or addicting game, I don't expect that, but I hope to release it on itch.io just to have my first 'released' game xD) so I'd love to hear more feedback.
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/trindle-armored-defense-1

I'll check out all of your games in return as well, later. Today I'll be traveling so won't have time, but monday and wednesday I should have time to check out your games in return and leave you a feedback and rate your games.

Thank you all for your time!

Comment your game and I try it out!. Unfortunately however, only Web or windows only :)

Try out my game too! Didn't have time to play much, as a result, I have a little catching up to do in terms of votes. Currently sitting at 14 votes.

I uploaded an extended version of my entry's soundtrack :

http://soundcloud.com/nicso/running-out-of-power

(well, no more soundcloud embedding i guess)

The game is playable here :

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/ads-will-tell-our-story

Hi, Sorry for repeating this if somebody else already wrote it here.

I want to make you, fellow LDjammers, that there's currently a nice humble bundle of unity and unreal development books.

You can find it here: https://www.humblebundle.com/books/unreal-unity5-book-bundle

It seems quite nice, and I would reccommend it if you want to get more into game development.

Hello there wonderful developer person!

I heard a rumour that you Ludum Dari (plural?) like making games. We run a partnered server over on Discord called GameDevNetwork for all things gamedev, whether that be in the form of code support, bouncing back story ideas or just sharing your lovely work.

GDN is a friendly, supportive development community that aims to help you become the best developer you can be!

We host monthly(ish) jams with fabulous prizes (by which I mean stickers and PR mentorship, we strictly avoid monetary prizes, we're here for creativity after all!) and love spreading community flair.

We also have a #gamejam channel reserved to contain the intense action of fantastic jams such as Ludum Dare.

Drop by and talk about anything from your Ludum Dare project to what your favourite pizza topping is over here: https://discord.gg/gdn :tada:

I'm also an avid game jammer/hackathoner, feel free to poke me about AR/VR, code things or just some of the cool projects you've worked on :heart:!

Oh hey! we've also got an awesome game jam coming up next month! Check that out here: https://itch.io/jam/game-dev-network-dragon-jam

Hello guys,

Since I've started to participate in Game Jams and in the OneGameAMonth challenge, I've decided to make this asset to help me speed up the "default" game structure that I use in almost all games, things like Menu, the sound, game controller scripts, feedback class to instantiate UI elements on the canvas based on a world position, custom UI editor window etc. The link to download it is right below, the GitHub repository and the documentation about how to use it too: 

The link to the repository in GitHub: https://github.com/JohnnyDalvi/JohnnyDStandardAsset

Package Download: https://www.dropbox.com/s/xsk19nx8fzihqig/JohnnyDalvi%20Standard%20Asset.unitypackage?dl=0

Documentation: https://github.com/JohnnyDalvi/JohnnyDStandardAsset/blob/master/README.md

This Asset Consists off:

• Singleton Master GameObject that is responsible for managing overall options such as Player Preferences, Custom Events, in-game message windows, pause/unpause, overall sound manager, musics and PlayerFeedback class;
• Custom UIEditor (Window/UI Editor) that can handle mass UI Image/Text/Outline color change;
• Premade Menu flow, with a loading scene, start menu and the Game scene with inbuilt options.

I've already used an earlier version of this asset once in this last Ludum Dare, it prevented me losing several hours working on default things, perhaps it can be useful for other people too. Let me know your opinion regarding it if you do try and you can also ask for pull-requests so we can improve it together. Regardless of that, I will keep updating and improving this asset in order to speed up my pipeline.

You can follow the news about the asset in my webpage

Thanks.

Greetings All! Thank you for your feedback on my game thus far, I've taken suggestions that are within the scope of the rules for making updates and have applied those. Fixes include:

Start and End screen are no longer by-passable immediately. There is a 3 second timer so you can just spam click your way through it.

Power Warning no longer plays continuously. It instead plays every 5 seconds. Much less annoying.

I re-balanced variable settings. Things ramp up a bit faster now.

There was a math issue for damage when a ship collides with your base, this has been corrected and power use has been balanced a bit around it.

Hit boxes are a bit larger than they were on the enemies

There is still no final score on the game over screen, I didn't get time to include that during the contest and feel it is likely out of scoop for the rules post jam. I'm planning on continuing to develop this game to a more finished product so look for a post jam version in the future.

Play/Rate my game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/invaders-from-the-next-planet-over