This boof my cuz over here just had was just plain whack yo

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I did not expect to get top 100 in any category. Color me surprised, especially considering I wasn't trying to make anything amazing this time around.

If you would like to play it, the most up to date version can be found here: https://infinitycore.itch.io/janky-marble-v2

It can even be played on a touch screen (though still through the browser)

Hey everyone!(I let everything on my mind spill out and this post is probably gonna be a bit of downer :( )

First I want to say thanks to everyone who played and rated my game, especially last few ratings that made it past the 20 needed ratings. I was gonna make an small update for the game improving some of the rough edges of the game and maybe make a post inviting people to try it out, but I didn't and still received the last few missing ratings, and I appreciate it a lot. I appreciate the people who look out for games falling behind on ratings and just people who played and rated my game in general.

Now the results speak for themselves, my game didn't receive good ratings and they are fairly average, and that's because my game IS average, and I don't feel bad about my ratings, I'm happy people rated it honestly and I would have done the same, but I feel like I could have done a lot better.

While I did miss the first day of the jam due to technical issues and was one day short compared to the other people, I still could have smoothed some of the rougher corners in post. And while I did make one patch, I didn't make the 2nd patch that I already had list of issues that I wanted to fix.

And while I might have been busy some of the earlier days, I was free the last 4-5 days of the rating period. But I just couldn't do it :( I just couldn't sit down and start working... I would say I understand programming pretty well and I like to challenge my self by making complex things(or at least what I think are complex). So it wasn't the issue about not knowing how to fix things, so I have fairly smart head on my shoulder, I had plenty of time... I have food and water, and I have a roof over my head - warm little apartment, I live alone so no one was there to disturb my work, all the comforts person might need... so I had no obstacles and yet.. I just couldn't get my self to make a little patch for my game. Sure it would have probably taken me like 12 hours or so, but I like programming and I like making games... So I really don't know why I am struggling :(

And lately I have noticed that this is reoccurring theme, after I moved out to live in this apartment all by my self, I realized that I am struggling a lot with doing even basic stuff, not because I don't know how to do it but just because I cant do it. And I am also struggling with finding fulfilling job or any job for that matter and even more so struggle staying in the job.. I'm struggling making ends meet, and while I am minimalist and it helps bring the costs down quite considerably, and I have help of my family. I usually work on some odd projects and what not and make some money, but I don't know how sustainable this is. I feel like I'm stuck in a loop and I'm spiraling down towards darkness and void :(

I have a good head on my shoulders(I think..) and can come up with ways to make money but when it comes to actually doing it I just cant do anything

And while I just realized this last few years, when I think back to it, I realize that I've struggled most of my life with doing things and that I have very low motivation to do anything, back then I thought I was just lazy, but now I realize that this problem might be bigger... and the name of the theme this ludum dare couldn't be more fitting to my situation... Its as if its there to taunt me.

I have good health, all the basic human comforts one might need, but yet I am struggling fighting this invisible enemy and I don't think I am doing a good job at it :(

Anyway, a cry later, I don't know why I am writing this here, I usually try to keep this to my self, maybe it was cry for help or maybe some sort of catharsis..

Anyway I hope you are doing better than me and I hope, whoever or wherever you are, that you can achieve your dreams

Going through the results page is a pain. HEY FIRST PLACE JAM WINNERS! POST YOUR GAME LINKS HERE IF YOU WON A CATEGORY! I’ll be making some art for the winners.

Not one of my better Ludum Dare scores at the end of the day, though it's more or less within averages for my entries (2-4 avg across all scores, usually with one score that game excels in - like Innovation for Senbir, or Humour for Hugely Unpopular President Simulator, which was incidentally the closest I came to the big 100 hall-of-fame in all of my years Daring to Ludum...Dare) - about 1500th average across all scores, with its best being Mood (1085) and Innovation (1371).

I believe this speaks to the fact that a lot more people are making games for Ludum Dare, and they're making better games. I'm content to yeet something out the door and work on it after the fact to make something good out of the prototype, and y'all are just out there kicking arse and putting out amazing & polished games in the span of a weekend. Rock on, jammers.

That being said, I also notice an odd disparity in ratings - for the most part every review left has been quite positive (especially w/rt to the mood, which brings me such joy to see - if other people are rejoicing at the spacey mood much the same as I am whenever I work on it, then this game was a success), and yet those comments only represent about half (12 comments vs. 22 reviews) of the total ratings I got. This maybe isn't surprising - it never feels good to rip someone else's game apart, especially when you know they went through all the same trials and tribulations of game jam development you did, and I would hazard a guess the lowest ratings are probably among those who didn't post a comment, either because it feels bad, or maybe because they just were too busy to write up constructive criticism & it fell off the schedule, as tends to happen in the hectic aftermath of a game jam.

As for how things are going post-LD47, I got saving/loading implemented a few weeks ago, and of late, I've been starting to slog away at the difficult task of adding spaceships to the game - it's a whole new set of nightmarish difficulties and hacks being required.

• Ships need to have the same seamless transition from ground to space/vice versa as players, as well as support for being anywhere in the system at any velocity.
• They need to be simulatable server-side to let ships continue to work without a player behind the metaphorical wheel or when their pilot is logged out outright.
• This means they need to work independent of the Unity physics system, as well as the active-visible frame of reference, to allow for ships to maintain consistent and accurate positions/velocities no matter how far out from the 0,0,0 point they are, and to ensure they can de-orbit/crash-land and whatnot consistently, even when the host is on another planet or flying through deep space.
• They also need to have a pretty decent physics simulation in place that would allow for stuff like using offset RCS thrusters to turn the ship, maneuver it around, etc, as well as for how their handling will change as they burn up their fuel supplies and the likes.
• All of this needs to work alone or with friends, and players need to be able to pilot ships seamlessly, and preferably with easy support for co-op flying if you add additional seats to it (e.g, one player is controlling main thrust and pitch/yaw/roll, another has maneuvering thrusters galore - this is really an engine feature for later use in another project where advanced co-op piloting would be beneficial for more than just the cool factor)

Thus far, the core physics stuff is semi-working. Translation to/from planetary surfaces is still pretty borked (velocity does not transfer correctly and you tend to get chucked off into deep space one way or another), and it does not work well when the active frame of reference for display is a rotated planet (though the issue may just be visual by the looks of things - which is fine, seeings as how you won't be seeing/flying a ship in deep space while on a planet :P), plus there's no interaction with player characters of yet. Progress is slow-going, in no small part thanks to motivational issues and the general mind-boggling complication of the task being made worse by odd and arbitrary bugs I'm having no luck with fixing.

Such is the life of game development. Keep on keepin' on, jammers, and stay safe out there.

Thanks everyone for playing and rating the game! I'm completely shocked how well it did! :)

also, I made a devlog about it if anyone is interest: https://youtu.be/2pARzp80NFg

We wanted to see how other people did in the jam, so we wrote this little website. You can look up certain places by category.

This way you can find games that have a similar rating to yours for example :)

http://karugamo.agency/ldjam-analysis/

Know what? We don't make games for numbers, we make games for people. And no matter how bad your ratings are, some people out there enjoyed your game and thats all you should care about.

I think ratings are like the grades in school, it doesn't tell you how good you are, it just gives you a reason to learn and here it's a reason to play other games. Who would sit down and play games after the jam is over, if there wasn't a rating system?

So if you think your game is awesome and you think about making it a commercial game but the ratings are just average - go for it. Chances are your game is awesome. And you shouldn't obey some numbers, you should only obey you.

PS: not talking about my own ratings here, they are fine, just don't waste your ideas because of some numbers - there are lots of brilliant games out there, if you didn't make it to the top 100, thats no reason to throw a good concept away.

I found it to be a very fulfilling experience and was pleasantly surprised with my score even if I got nowhere close to winning. I can't say I took the event completely seriously but it definitely motivated me to try exploring game development more as a creative outlet.

To tell you the truth, this ludum dare happened on a not so good time in my real life and at one point I considered dropping the development, some things were ultimately not implemented, but the positive feedback kept me going and I am glad I pushed through. I am happy I was able to deliver a rat game you've all wanted and grateful to have met other rat appreciators.

I will be looking forward to participating next time and I will make my own itchio page for the next entry as well as for my other project.

Thank you.

I didn't win (obviously) but I don't care, I had fun

Another random developer expressing his views on ratings.

I've read multiple people's thoughts on post-jam, and now another developer is crowding the blog. Me.

We all know that for a lot of people, it doesn't end when Ludum Dare ends. Personally, I think embracing the negative comments seems a little too negative, and completely ignoring the negative feedback is too positive. My advice: it's your game! It's always important to know how people who have never played your game did, and figure out how to make your game more player-friendly from that, but when it comes down to things like graphics and audio: go with my motto, "to each his or her own"! You put hard work into making your game your game your own! If you're content with the quality of things like graphics and audio, no one can stop you! You are yourself!

...And a quick reminder, I'll be giving some artwork to the winning games! Stay tuned!

Thank you everyone for taking the time to play and rate Loopertary. I'm very suprised, happy and humble with the results!! I was hoping for a bit better from my previous entry (this is my second LD), but I was not expecting quite a turn around.

Feel free to play it! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/loopertary

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I would like to thank anyone who played my game this ludum dare. This was some of the most fun ive had in a while and now im going to start counting down the days till ld 48 (:

Anyone want me to make a humorous post-mortem of my game? There'll be plenty of tips and awful art!

The title says it all, As i'm not a programmer, but a sound designer, i'll only comment the Audio category. It's really disappointing that the ''winning game'' all have only between 20-30 ratings. 20-30 ratings don't necessarly means bad soundtrack or sound effects, but i heard better in other game who have more ratings,(not talking about my game here)

To me it just makes it obvious that, the more ratings you have, The less chance you have to get at the top because you are way more subject to super picky critics. If you do the math, you'll understand why.

I think it's kind of a problem if you want to make it a contest with position. My game was one of the most rated game (350 ratings), which is a lot and i got 78 th position on audio which is not bad, but still, it feels bad to see people who just took premade audio assets or people who have just 20 ratings or barely rated any games going up on the ranking.

Also, some of the games that have higher position don't even have an Original soundtrack made during the jam, which feels even worse.

How do people note audio? SFX quality, how good it's programmed in the game? Made during the jam? my guess is that most people used pre-made SFX... not super clear. On the music side, do you need an original soundtrack?

IMO people who don't make their own SFX and music from scratch should opt out of the category cause they have no credit for the assets, or either make 2 category SFX and Music. It doesn't mean a game should have no SFX or music but it's not your asset, plz opt out.

I think the organisation should think about how the ranking works and add more criteria on how game should end up in the top 100 at least.

Peace, :)

I just want to say a couple of things. First I enjoyed from making a game for the Ludum Dare 47 COMPO. Second, I was really disappointed from the fact that some people write in the comments how they LOVED the game just to get a good rating back and behind the scenes they rate bad. I was on the top 10 of getting feedback on a game and I got a lot of ratings for a COMPO game but still the fact you get a lot of ratings sometimes looks like a bad thing. I think I will participate in the next Ludum Dare also but if you did one of the things above then please write your honest comment and don't lie because after all it is a friendly competition.

I'm definitely going to turn this into a more complete game, this was a lot of fun. (I'll post more info here once I have an actual engine up and running).

Hi! I am sorry for the clear as a whistle things I am about to say.

Ratings - It sounds like a joke that 20 ratings can win the Ludum Dare so easily because if you have 10 friends that participating then a half of your ratings will be 5. So, in my opinion, the minimum number of rating for participating should be 50 or the fact that you have a lot of ratings should help you in some way.

Comments - People write in the comments "Great Game!" and then behind the scene they rate you badly. I don't like this kind of behaviour because the fact that you rated me bad does not mean that I will rate you bad. But still, if you rate bad then you must have a reason. In my opinion, a rating without a comment should not be worth something. And the ratings that each one gave to you should be seen only for the game creator. If you can have other ideas of how the comments will fit the rating you got then it's good also but YOU SHOULD THINK ABOUT SOMETHING.

Ways to improve -

• If someone rated some other game bad/good without giving any good explanation and comment the rating should not be counted.

• Minimum number of ratings is 50.

• You should rate at least 50 other people.

• People who caught as a 5 rating giver automatically to their friends should be suspended.

• Your own current rating(not number of ratings, the real rating) should be seen to the game creator(not publicly).

• Fix the but of the website that disconnects you from your account while you use it.

This is my recommendations from what I have seen in the tournament. I really enjoyed participating in it but still, there are a lot of things to improve in my opinion. If one of the Ludum Dare managers see this note I think he should read it.