Second game jam for me. Lets see if this turns into utter chaos. Based on the OVER FIVE THOUSAND THEME OPTIONS to slaughter, I know this will be interesting once it begins. Time to prepare for EVERYTHING.
Things I'll use:Unity, Photoshop, Visual Studio (C#), BOSCA CEOIL, and THE POWER OF DETERMINATION
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Good evening! (or good
Hey Guys!!
Just about a week to go now, so exciting =) If you are planning to use Blender to model stuff for LD, maybe these videos can give you some tricks to speed up your workflow. I use these techniques for LudumDare as I do the compo entries. They are not really supposed to be tutorials as such, but they can maybe give you some ideas??
I just released this video a few minutes ago where I model and rig 5 low poly characters in 10 minutes (real time): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZDnV4KshM8
And here is another one where I model 10 cars in 10 minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YALV3HqfdLY
Take care everyone and get your software in good shape before the LD timer starts :)
Since English is not my first language, I wrote "unefficient" instead of "inefficient" on my username, (I can hear the applauses). Well, that looked like a pretty bad start on the community, so since there is no way to change usernames (as I know) I had to make a new account (which is this).
thank you all for your advices! I'm pretty sure that they will help me a lot on my game developing journey!
Cheers!
Remember back in the day we used to do Warmup Weekends where we made little games to test out our tools and stuff like that? Well, I'm bringing it back baby!
Here's a quick avoider game I threw together in an hour and a half to get me in the dev mood. I'm planning on adding a little to it every day until the event.
https://minibobbo.itch.io/warmup-weekend
With crowdforge apparently no longer working and a lack of other public team finding resources that I'm aware of, I figured I should link the looking-for-team channel of the unofficial LD Discord in case that may help anyone out who is still looking last minute.
As many times as I've been in Ludum Dare (Since 2012) I haven't actually fully gone through my theme slaughter. That's changing this time! I've got 2000 themes slaughtered now. Here's some more good themes I enjoyed:
Just Keep Missing
Always two there are; no more, no less. Master and apprentice.
We Need More Hammers!
It's too slow!!!
Couple This!
It works sometimes
Closing Time
Land ho!
This is the way
You're history, Tim!
We should dig deeper
Don't open that
Smack him silly
The end of all ___!
You really shouldn't mix those
Sock Puppets (!)
Go With The Flow
In And Out
Like In The Movies
U P T O E L E V E N !!!!!!!
Mom: We have games at home
"Plan your way out of THIS one!"
Not Again!
It's alive!
What you gonna do now?
WHO'S THE VILLIAN NOW?
Clean it up!
Where does that secret trapdoor lead?
Be Quiet!
P r o G a m e r M o v e
Hello humanity. I am starting work on an 8-bit music making tool inspired by bosca coeil. My design goals are that it will be easy to use(like bosca), that it will use java instead of flash(unlike bosca), and that it will make sounds that are pleasant to hear(unlike bosca). I will release this tool for free hopefully before the jam. If you are intrested please let me know and tell me what kind of features you would like to see : D
Also, any suggestions for the name are highly appriciated
So back by popular demand (actually, just me and one other person...)
What is Warmup Weekend? Well, in the slightly edited words of PoV...
If you are looking for a place to test out your tools and make sure that other people can actually play something you created, feel free to post stuff over at the warmup jam hosted on itch.io
https://itch.io/jam/ld-46-warmup-weekend
Super keen for LD 46 in ~1 week.
I'll be using my usual tools in my ongoing efforts to upskill and prototype new game demos and ideas:
Game Engine: Unity Language: C# 2D: Photoshop/GIMP Audio Editing: Audacity Music: Bosca Ceoil (And maybe VCV Rack)
And what happened with LD45?? I didnt even do an update post after the initial 'Im in' post last LD so here we go.
Overall a bit of a trainwreck, I had the idea of making a old-school-Doom style of game, ie a floor-drifting first-person-shooter. A few things ended up going ok, I got some ok movement and character controls setup, a neat little door script that made placing doors all around the scene super easy and ran purely from script (ie no need for any animation or animation controllers at all), and even had the basics of combat going - along with a basic decal system for blood splatters that worked pretty well (half the time anyway)
Splatter Decals & combat:
Custom character controller:
Level Design was also something I got pretty far with, having 3 different buildings you could fight through and some outdoor areas.
They also ended up looking like quite a mess once combat was over!
Music was something else I got into about half way through the jam, and unexpectantly it actually went alright. I started out by just remaking the main Doom theme (linked below) and from there I used that as a basis to make my own tune, which is unfinished.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3s_O3cXDmI
But what went wrong: I think it comes down to 1 main element - Scope. It really seem to be my achilles heel in gamejams, I often find myself aiming for projects or ideas that are too ambitious or too difficult. ie for this Doom-like game, I should have gone for the most simplistic character control setup I possibly could, instead I built it from the ground up and fell into the trap of problematic physics and code.
Likewise the art style fell behind very quickly, and Ive found that in order to stay properly interested/motivated in a game I need the art style to at least show some direction and potential early on, which sometimes means adding polish to graphics super early, or at least getting the style up to spec early on. A bit of a no-no in terms of game development, but something Ive just had to accept and work with.
So coming out of LD45 and looking forward at LD46, what do I want to focus on doing better?
1) Lessening scope and complexity I really need to cut back and focus on simpler games, along with identifying scope blow-out and issues, as early on as possible (should really be handled during the initial idea brainstorming)
2) Graphics! It goes against various 'guidelines' to focus on graphics and polish early on in game development or during a gamejam, but I really feel like my most successful gamejam entries focused heavily on graphics early on, and it really drives my motivation, so its something I need to accept in my workflow rather than fight against.
3) Playable demo in 24 hours I always say this yet I rarely do it, I really feel like having that end-to-end game in the first 24 hours is key. That means a win condition, and a lose condition, and the main/core 'feature' of the game at least implemented and working in one way or another.
Onwards to LD46!
Decided to do some experimentation and also practice my UI skills. so made some buttons, toggles and sliders in UE4. Took about 2.5 - 3 hours to make (including customization options). No sprites or textures used, just the default rectangle image.
Sounds from Kenney.nl
GIF :
Video with sound :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqXyuqafpBg
I created a basic UI system with a navigation bar, an inspector and the main "body". Scales nicely and looks pretty modern. Tomorrow I want to implement the MIDI editor as a "UI Page"(a tab in the navigation bar). Any feedback or ideas are highly appriciated.
I've made most of my past entries in HTML with Javascript. Typically I start each entry by extracting the reusable parts from one of my earlier entries. Now, I've decided to switch to TypeScript, and while I'm at it, make a proper starting point for future games. So! Here is my framework, made by refactoring my last entry, Juicefruit Orchard.
I'm sharing this so that everyone can access the code base I'm starting with. But at this early stage, the value proposition for you to use this as your own code base is not very strong. The included library is pretty bare-bones, and I feel that I should put what is there through its paces in one or two jams before I can confidently recommend it to others to use. For now, the best way you can use it is probably to look through and see if there are any pieces you want to extract for your own code base or snippet library.
This caught me off-guard...
Oh and btw I'm in :)
Oof, finally made it through the slaughter! :smile: Keeping my fingers crossed it's the fun ideas that make it past.
For the next few days I'm going to be practicing with my Phaser/JS setup and reminding myself how to use bosca ceoil + sfxr. If anyone has any recommendations for music and sound tools to have a play with I'd love to hear them, it's one of my weakpoints and I'll be looking to improve in that area.
Definitely going to experiment with setting up a multiplayer server with Phaser 3 as I'd like to challenge myself with that in the Compo. Plus actually taking a look at itch.io and seeing how to put stuff up on there, I'll be making a page with each significant build as I go and just popping it up on Netlify but itch.io seems like something I should have a clue about...
Have a great weekend everyone!
Slaughter ALL the themes!
I know I always complain about the themes, but they really are unusually bad this time. Normally I vote for about 1/3 of them in the slaughter, this time it was less than 1/5. Obviously there are the tasteless coronavirus memes, but it seemed like fully 20% of the themes were variations on "losing = winning", another 15% were "the more/less you have, the more/less _", another 15% either "play as the level" or "play as the villain", and a final 10% some version of "the end is the beginning". I'm actually amazed y'all managed to find literally thousands of different ways of rephrasing the same handful of ideas.
Here's a project im working on, it's a Beat'Em Up mixed with Doom and cartoony graphics, actually a remake from an old game i made, this is my last work before the ld start.