First time going solo. Didn't make it in time for the compo, though. Here's my game if you want to try it out: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/untitled-sport-game.

It may initially look like a cucumber, but in reality it grows into a loyal friend and protector! Check out our game “The Last Guardian” here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/the-last-guardian (you can play on the web too)

These bots ain't gonna kill themselves, y'know.

Check the game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/machina-1

Includes WebGL version for your convenience, though desktop version is recommended :D

Hi all!

In our game, we have a replay value with the highscore! Here is the highest score we know made by a friend (Cypress) which is 77098. Could you beat him?

Here are some hints about our score mecanics. - Score given decrease with time after the poachers appeared, the quicker you shoot, the more you have. - Head Shot give extra point, don't miss the head. - Overall score is multiplicated when Rhinos arrived at 100% love progression, just a short time after gold heart which is 90 and means victory - Love progression increased faster with heart gold flirting rhinos.It take the lowest of the 2 Rhinos. - Gold very fast, pink fast, red normal, grey nothing, blue decrease. Keap them gold to get bonus earlier. - Shooting love ammo to Rhinos'ass increase their flirting value by 2 ranks.

Don't forget to change mouse speed in option if needed for better aiming. ;)

Here is our game : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/horny-rhino

I never thought that my first entry will ever get 50 ratings. In fact, I thought that my game would get less than 20 ratings.

This is thanks to the amazing LD community.

Congratulations, you made the Electron really happy.

If you want to see all Electron adventures, go and play: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/soulectron, rate it and leave your feedback, I'd really appreciate it!

Play here

HALPP TOBIAS

Just more a few ratings <3

Play here

Hey guys, could you help me get 100 downloads on my game (6 left)? Updated it yesterday, a lot of new features (Jam version is still there if you wanna try it)!

You can download the game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/guns-n-violets

Unfortunately we had to remove our shadows for the web build due to performance concerns, but the game can now be played on Mac/Linux as well, in the browser! It's still recommended to download the game if you are on Windows (and have the patience); the day&night cycle looks much cooler!

Check our game out here! Here's a really brief overview:

Planet Xenov-81 is under attack.
Can you save its people?

Xenov: Ascension is an isometric voxel tower defense game, with roguelike elements, in which you are a general in charge of protecting a city from foreign invaders. Prepare your defenses, and keep the city alive for as long as possible.

We made Finterior Decorator!!

The goal: Keep your fish happy. Collect the gold poop. Buy decorations. Make a beautiful aquarium.

Thanks to everyone who's played and rated our game so far! It's been awesome reading your responses! Play it here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/finterior-decorator

Just finished another pass on Mike vs LD site and got a free evening, so if you need some more rates hop into that comment section! If you also wish to get some honest feedback and (questionable) advice from the (somewhat) seasoned game developer, just add that in the comment. "Shut up and rate" is also a valid option.

Oh, and if you like over-engineered non-intuitive tactical games, you can go and play my entry. Just don't skip the tutorial if you want to live =)

Unit 21

Submission page: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/how-to-air

HTML shortcut: https://kwakuuuu.itch.io/how-to-air

Hey! During this Ludum Dare, my team and I made Scrambl'd, a puzzle platformer for the Game Boy! Some say it is brutal, too hard and in desperate need of checkpoints... while others say that it pays perfect homage to a bygone era of trial-and-error and unforgiving gameplay! To each, their own, I suppose. Either way, we're very proud of what we achieved during this LD, and absolutely appreciate all of the constructive feedback and kind words we've received thus far.

Why don't you head on over to our page and try it out for yourself?

We're currently working on implementing features and content we couldn't find time to do during the jam, to try to make this little thing into a proper game! Just yesterday, I finally took the time to add a sound effects system. Now, Scrambl'd sounds better than ever. :wink:

Making games for the Game Boy in 2020

Anyway, I thought it would be fun to share some technical details of the Game Boy, as well as some of the challenges one might encounter while developing games for it. The tools we used to develop this game are probably far better than anything developers had access to back in the day. Hobbyists have created super accurate emulators (bgb, SameBoy) with amazing debuggers and tools to visualize what lies in memory, be it VRAM or WRAM. There's hardly any need to try the game on proper hardware! (In fact, I don't think I ever did until after the deadline.)

Part 1: The Background

On the Game Boy, you never really manipulate pixels in a frame buffer, like you might do on a modern system. Instead, graphics rendering is based on tiles, 8 pixels tall and 8 pixels wide. Each "pixel" in a tile can be of one of four colors; 0 through 3. Whatever actual color these numbers represent on screen may vary depending on what palette is currently in use, but on the original Game Boy (or DMG) they can only represent either white, light gray, dark gray or black. Well, with a green-ish tint, of course!

Here's a visualization of the tile data that is loaded into video memory when playing a level of Scrambl'd, courtesy of bgb's VRAM viewer! A total of 384 tiles can be present in VRAM at any given time... and as you might be able to tell from the image, this includes the egg, springs, feather as well as all of the level's graphics. At any given time, it basically contains all graphics that you might want to show on screen now or in the near future. 384 are not that many!

One way to display these tiles on screen is by using the background. The background can display tiles from one of two tile maps that holds indices - tile numbers - of 32x32 tiles. This effectively means that each of these maps can, at any given time, represent 256x256 pixels composed of tiles! In our imagination, at least.

The Game Boy has a resolution of 160x144 pixels, so only roughly a quarter of the background can be seen at any time. Fortunately, the background (or viewport, if you will) can be scrolled freely in any direction and will wrap around its edges. We use this scroll to make it look like the "camera" is following the egg while it's traversing the level!

But... what do we do if we want levels larger than 32 tiles (or 256 pixels) in any direction? Well, Scrambl'd, like most games, solve this by making changes in the tile map as the background scrolls! Here you can see the background as it is scrolled around the tile map and the tile map being updated with new data as needed.

You might notice that the height of the level is constrained to the height of the background map. This is a limitation I imposed myself in order to make the scrolling logic a bit less complex. We only had 72 hours, you know. :wink: It is no problem, performance wise, to have levels like these scrolling in both directions!

That's about it! Of course, this is not in any way a detailed explanation, but I thought it would be fun to touch on some of the basics. If you found this at all interesting, make sure to leave a comment and I'll make sure to do a part 2. Maybe about the music! Or the sprites! Or the physics! Or about writing assembly! Or something else entirely!

Make sure to check out our game, Scrambl'd!

A big thank you to everyone who played, rated and gave feedback on our game! :v:

Thanks for all your feedback to https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/come-to-mama

Thanks for the time you spent trying my little stupid game. Thanks for comments and critics. Really <3 https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/cthulhu-must-be-kept-alive

1

Sorry I'm not that smart at times.. link: https://tristate.itch.io/hanging-by-a-copper-wire

I’ll admit I was both prepared and unprepared for this. Due to the pandemic, I was required to take four days off for the month of April, so as LD46 started on April 18th and finished on April 20th, I decided to book the 20th – 23rd off, meaning even if I aimed for the compo (which I did) I could work up to the 2AM deadline on April 20th and relax. However, it had been over a month since I last did a games jam, and admittingly my game development projects have been much slower than usual after the last patch to Gemstone Keeper. Needless to say, I powered on because I missed the last Ludum Dare in October and wasn’t going to miss out on another.

In tradition, the theme for Ludum Dare is voted for by participants. As you can see from how I voted, I was particularly keen on doing a non-violent game, gardening, dreams, outdated technology, momentum and power sources. As is also tradition, the theme that actually won out was Keep it Alive, which neither myself or a load of other devs I know was particularly keen about…

I’ve gotten into the habit of taking advantage of the theme voting rounds to brainstorm ideas for each potential theme, coming up with at least two game concepts for each one (although game concepts could also be shared with multiple themes). The best I could come up with for Keep It Alive the day before the compo started was “Fighting of viruses” and “Keepy Uppy”, both of which weren’t very creative to me. After some sleep, I kept thinking of the Garden, Side Effects and Turn a Violent Genre Non-Violent themes, so I ended up mashing those three ideas into a concept that could fit the Keep It Alive theme.

It was to be a run ‘n gun (violent genre) where you keep a garden alive by taking care of flowers (garden), and killing both weeds and bugs, which left unchecked will kill your garden faster (side effects).

In my experience with Game Jams, I’ve developed a set of rules I abide by. They have been tweaked over time, although I first wrote them down in 2018 in the run-up to Ludum Dare 43 when I made Tank Gauntlet.

• Gameplay First – Your game might look/sound great and have a really nice menu, but it won’t be a well-built game if not a finished game if you leave it at the last minute. Have your game prototype ready by the end of the first day.

So this part was simple: Get a prototype with the idea and mechanics done on the Saturday, so the rest of the time can be focused on making it look and sound nice.

For this game, it was getting a basic platformer with three different guns, and three different kinds of objects to fire at. Flowers, which would gradually die over time and you need to spray water to let them regain health. Weeds, which appear in random locations and can only be killed with weed killer. Bugs, which can appear randomly, move in a random direction and can only be killed with bug spray.

Visuals at this stage are incredibly basic, so I used rectangles and circles, as well as a basic tilemap set I use to test the autotile functionality of the tilemap code.

• Small Scope – My general amount of scope for a games jam is one main/unique game mechanic and two optional ones. It’s not worth putting so many mechanics and features in your game if you don’t have the time for it.

This rule was based on an old practice done by another game developer who goes by TheCherno. It’s there to make sure that whatever concept I have must have at least three things in it to be playable, and anything else can be implemented once those three are in place. For Keep the Garden Alive, the main mechanic would be the three different weapons, each would affect a specific object and each would be fired from a separate key. The two optional ones were platforming, which would involve running and jumping on floors, platforms and walls, and randomised levels for variety.

The latter one I ended up having to rewrite a couple of times because procedural/random levels are much more complex than levels with a top-down perspective, they are very much possible but you have to factor in gravity and jumping to ensure that platforms are reachable. Even after I got a manageable random level generator working, I quickly implemented double jumps to ensure all platforms are reachable.

• Know your Tools – Don’t use software you barely/don’t know how to use, including engines. This comes from seeing many people say they’ll use Unity/UE4 because everyone uses it, despite not knowing how to use it themselves and spend more time figuring out how to get certain things working.

For game development, my go-to environment is Visual Studio 2017, writing C++ code with Vigilante, my own engine built on top of SFML. I’ve contemplated going back into HaxeFlixel, but after Ludum Dare 41 ended in disaster and what little time I took to practice, I went with something I was more confident would be stable enough to work with. Vigilante has had some updates which definitely helped. A few months earlier, I discovered an easier approach to implementing platformer physics using Finite State Machines, so being able to have the player jump, wall jump and even double-jump would be a case of adding new states or tweaking existing states, instead of the approach I went with in Tank Gauntlet of several nested if-statements and boolean flags.

I also got to take advantage of using multiple cameras in my engine, which admittingly I never tested before deciding to give every flower a camera so players could see a flower’s status when it’s off-screen, but it didn’t take me long to find out how to fix it.

For graphics, I use piskell for pixel art and sprite animations. It’s a basic web-only tool that’s very easy to pick up, set up a palette and start drawing frame by frame. I wanted to have a little bit of variety so I also took advantage of both SFML’s vertex arrays and primitive shape classes, which I ended up using for both the player’s arms/legs and the flowers.

Audio has largely been sound effect generators and the music generator cgMusic (with LMMS and soundfonts to convert them to playable audio files). In hindsight, I’ve been very rusty when it comes to audio. I gave a new SFX generator a go, SFXIA, which works pretty well although it’s much more experimental compared to the more straightforward BFXR and ChipTone. As for music, cgMusic has been a good fallback if I want something long and complex, but considering how in my much older entries such as Galaticus and Glow Drop where I actually composed the music myself, it makes me feel lazy.

• Stick Mostly with What You Know – Trying to learn a new mechanic, genre or art style as a project is fun, but don’t overdo it, especially when you only have 48 hours. Time spent struggling or figuring out how to implement something new could be used to deliver more of what you already know how to implement.

While I should really branch out, like I did when I made two 3D first-person games back in 2018, or how I attempted a strategy game in Ludum Dare 41, arcade shooters are the kinds of games that I can set up easily so I have more time to experiment with them.

• Make Your Content Easy and Noticeable – Don’t feel you have to put the extra effort into how your game looks and sounds when you’re at that stage. If you do, don’t focus it on something the players aren’t gonna notice. Sometimes big simple designs work better.

This was a rule I wrote specifically because in my Ludum Dare 42 entry, Closing in on Pascal, I thought it was a brilliant idea to spend five hours on a player sprite that was so small that you couldn’t see the detail. Definitely not the case for this one:

Some people have described it as being Kirby-like, although I was partially inspired by the Gyroids from the early Animal Crossing games. Simple and clear designs don’t take as long and can be just as appealing as a overly complex design, I mean one of the other entries from this jam has you play as a tumbleweed.

• 621 – At least Six hours of sleep, Two meals and One shower per day. Don’t pull all-nighters, don’t skip or replace meals with energy drinks and savoury stuff and calm yourself down for a bit while being hygienic.

This is one of my two anti-crunch rules. Someone commented that a slight alternative is the 832 rule (eight hours of sleep, three meals, two showers), which is actually much closer to my usual work and game jam routine, although I took this rule from conventions and festivals who use it as a general baseline for attendees to stay healthy. It’s a lot more memorable to me personally, but there is an emphasis on the AT LEAST part.

• Take a Walk – A breath of fresh air will help you think of solutions to that one bug that you cannot figure out how to fix or that mechanic that doesn’t feel right.

Fortunately, it’s one of the few things I can still do in this pandemic. I regularly walk around the nearby countryside for around an hour each day, and usually, the outdoors have been helpful for keeping me calm and not mentally tiring myself out. I’ve also been practising French as part of my daily routine recently.

• Find a Friend – If you’re gonna go the jam route, see if you can get friends on board. If you work together it’ll be more collaborative and less pressure on you. Be sure to find a decent way to thank them after it’s all over. Even if you’re going solo for the compo, having a friend to bounce off ideas and improvements is always beneficial and eases off stress.

Thanks Kriss for putting up with me on Discord for four days. 🙂

In conclusion, a lot of my problems from this jam all involve the keyword of “preparation”. I definitely need to prepare more now. Definitely, before Ludum Dare 47, I want to at least have a better understanding of LMMS and other art tools so I could at least get through the art and sound stages of my game jams at a level I used to be at. On the technical side, I am happy with what I was able to implement, because I got to use features of my engine that I wouldn’t have had a chance to try out otherwise.

With Ludum Dare, games are ranked if they get at least twenty votes. Keep the Garden Alive was able to reach 20 votes in two days, but now I’ll have to wait two weeks to see how well it does. So far my best ever ranking was 27th in Humour, but I’m happy with any entry of mine that gets into the top 100 of a category.

Easy to understand and quite fast-paced game. If you have a few minutes to play and rate my game it would be awesome! Thanks!

the game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/water-it

Introduction

If anything, I've learned that the entropy is the constant during the game jams.

Ironically enough, our game is called Entropia.

This is my 8th LD. I've been here since LD32, in and out. Last few jams, I've participated with my wife and we did some nice games together. This time around, we teamed up with our friend, Will, who is also a colleague of mine. We've been working together as developers for 2.5 years. Although, we're working on business apps, not games.

The time zones

As you know, the world has been split up into timezones. Earth going around the Sun and all that. Well, the thing is, we live in Central Europe and our friend Will is in Brazil. Far, far away. Before the jam, I was kind of scared of the time difference, but we still decided to try it out, regardless of the 5 hours between us.

Me and my wife, we haven't started immediately after the theme anouncement, but almost a full day after. Will on the other hand already had some art sketched by the time we joined. Then we hopped into a Discord video call and brainstormed for a while. Then we went to bed. That is the nature of the timezones. But even if time zones weren't the issue, the remoteness of our team was a struggle.

Note to self: The team should probably all be in the same room (or at a shouting distance).

Who does what?

Will loves doing pixel art. Despite being a developer and not an artist per se, he does it really well. So his part was a no brainer. As the matter of fact, he did join our team primarily to do art.

And that's great! Why, you ask?! Because I suck at art.

I love to code. I can do some art. But I draw like I'm blind. So, that was a no brainer as well.

My wife, well, she's more of a jack of all trades. Good at a lot of things. So while Will was turning calories into pixels, and while I was pretending to understand the code I've written 15 minute ago, she was already deep into doing menus, coding animations and looking for good sounds and music for our game. Her being a constant advisor was keeping me on track and she was cheering for me when I got stuck in some obscure bugs and almost wanted to give up. While I can't precisely categorize her work into a single category, all the bazillion things that she did was actually pushing us forward.

Will and me, we called her a manager.

Note to self: Always work in a team. Being a lone wolf sucks.

Learning from mistakes

My main problem as a coder is the fact that I have WAY TOO MANY ideas that I want to implement. Proper scoping is a challenge for me and I constantly need someone to tell me that we have to cut this feature or the other. That's also the reason why my solo LD games were mostly unfinished.

This time around I decided to keep my scope down. There was plenty of time. But, there was another problem. I've never done a game in my life that utilizes pixel art. And quite a lot of my time was spent fiddling around the engine trying to make it work properly.

A few hours before the deadline, everything was in disarray. Total entropy.

Note to self: get accustomed with the tools before the jam.

Time is ticking away

Well, you are all very familiar with the feeling of the dealine approaching. So many features unpolished, so many bugs waiting to be discovered. And so little time.

In the end, we didn't manage to produce exactly what we wanted. But it was playable. I still remember the first time I've started it up after the core gameplay was finished. It was actually a game. And then we started tweaking it.

But, 50ish hours is not really enough to make something balanced. Balanced games require a lot of testing. And I mean, A LOT!.

Note to self: For jams, make games that don't require much balancing.

What the future holds

When the jam was over, we needed some rest. Mags and me, we fixed a few bugs and made ports to other platforms. Then over the next few days, I've fixed some more of gameplay and we published an improved and updated version. The way it was meant to be played.

After a bunch of people's comments, we've realized what parts of the game we need to change. So we had a meeting discussing the potential future of the game. If there'll be time, we'll try to make it into a proper mobile game.

Until then, I can only say that I've really had a nice weekend with my wife and my friend.

Having you guys rate our game is really appreciated. But even more than that, the feedback you're leaving is what matters the most. And for all of that, I thank you.

Entropia

So, now that you know everything about it, maybe you can try it out.

Direct link: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/entropia

If you've already played and rated, it'd be great if you could play an updated version and tell us what you think of the improvements.

I'm hunting for a bug right now, but met one i did not expect. Two worms can spawn at the same location, making their formation look "special". (wiggling in the bottom left)

If you are unsure what i mean

That's the game, just in case: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/blackbird-lives-matter

Check out Until Sunrise :

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/until-sunrise

You can finally also find a downloadable Windows standalone version :

https://jishin.itch.io/until-sunrise

Bonus - Wife approves :

My game turned out to be an RTS. Man, these are complicated... Check out what I could get done here! (WebGL)

PLAY OVERHOSPITALIZED HERE

Just wanted to know what you think about extending the game. At it's current state is very short and I have some things in mind that could be implemented to make the game a little bit longer (and maybe funnier).

I was also thinking about making a mobile version, what do you think?

If you want to try it out and rate it, here's the link: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/flora

Bucking the trend a little here, as I'll be streaming on YouTube instead of Twitch. Come hang out and chat about LD, and submit your game if you'd like it played and reviewed on air!

We'll be live in just a couple of minutes, see you there!

https://youtube.com/TheGreatBerate/live

Can you beat the Reaper?
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/deaths-compass

I'm new to game dev, and this is my first game ever. Hopefully you play/rate my game! Enjoy!

The link is: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/sly-as-a-fox

Its so cool to have friends and family check out your game and comment on it! Now they think I'm interesting :)

If you'd also like to check it out, Here is the link!

I appreciate the people who have played my game.

Tomorrow I plan to release an update using feedback received from all comments to date. :smiley:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/save-the-torch

When creating our game Wayward, our team decided to try and use a little lighting in Unity as possible. We have had some trouble getting the look exactly how we want it with basic Unity lighting in the past. All of the shaders in the game are unlit, so no matter what the environment lighting is, the look stays the same. I made use of Shader Graph in Unity to use nodes to make the shaders that I need. Starting with the "trees" in the game we decided to use something called the fresnel effect. Basically fresnel is the amount of light reflectance on an object based on the viewing angle. We were able to use it to highlight the edges of the 3D Models. It created a 3D look while the objects were completely unlit and it works at every angle of the camera.

The shader was set up to be able to control the color of the edges and the color of the inside which was kept black.

Without the fresnel, you can't even tell that the tree is a 3D model.

Its a pretty simple shader with just a few nodes, but it was very effective for the look we were going for. Another shader that was created was one for the glow underneath the player. This was created by having a large radial gradient that was transparent and a smaller one in the middle. It creates an effect where it looks like the "light" is is more intense right underneath the player which would make sense if the player was emitting light.

Our team has had a lot of fun checking out other games and seeing how creative people can be with graphics. There are many great games with fantastic graphics this time around. I hope you found this useful or at least somewhat interesting. Come check out our game Wayward, we would love to know what you think of it!

In response to the many, many requests for this, I've added a new mechanic that makes the player follow the mouse while still retaining directional movement. I've also given the mouse a custom cursor for added cool factor. These changes will be seen after Ludum Dare 46 is over! Let us know what you think! :smiley_cat:

Hey there, just wanted to tell that I've added an HTML5 build for my entry Heartful Defense.

It's a simple-to-play card-based tower defense with 15 levels and a 1-life challenge mode.

I still need some ratings to reach 20, so please play it if you like TDs!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/cloudy-with-a-chance-of-pain

Just finished a postmortem blog post for last weekend's compo game. Lots of good lessons learned this time around!

Added a HTML to run directly on browser. But still need a keyboard and mouse to play!

MOTHERSHIP

Controls: - "Arrows" to move - "Left Shift" (hold) to run - "C" to interact - "Space" to get/use item - "Esc" to pause/unpause - "Mouse Left button" to choose

In this puzzle game, you will learn how to get along with the peculiar rules of a mysterious island.

Music is the key!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/to-Leave

https://5imon.itch.io/to-leave

In each level, you will have to find the 5 matching platforms and activate them.Then you will be able to gather what you need to get to the next day.

We are Cabbage soup Studio and us proud to present our game to you.

A Balloon’s Journey is the game that you will be a plane that tries to deliver a mail inside the balloon to the other side of the world. So, please take care of the balloon :)

Link: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/a-balloons-journey

Hope you enjoy our game, Good luck.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yr8inUlKgU

Through a brainstorming session in our team, a random note written down on our whiteboard was "beached whale". It stayed on our heads for a while as we considered other ways of "keeping something alive" such as balancing a candle or growing a garden, all while keeping in mind our desire and skills towards making a platformer game. Eventually, we brought aspects of our ideas towards the beached whale, and since the gist was that you had to bring it water, the game couldn't take place on a beach where the sea was literally right there. And so...

Boom. Whale falls from the sky. Why? PLAY OUR GAME AND FIND OUT! :)

Also, we are still working towards revamping "Pitcher and the Whale" for a post-LD Steam release so follow us on Twitter (https://twitter.com/ClubFoxhole) to check out the latest improvements and features being added!

Check out and rate our game here!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/pitcher-and-the-whale

Hello everyone!

I'm currently live working on an update for my submission, S.L.I.M.E.S. Division!

Come join in and say hi :)

http://www.twitch.tv/ImYoshify

Colonise planets, build cities and expand your universe!

Will you be able to control an empire, or will you have to jump planet to planet in order to survive!

Play here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/continuity Play the game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/continuity

* Play as a dino in Nest Guard VR! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/nest-guard-vr *

Making Perish Alive with another artist was fun and challenging! Especially when you have different ideas and different styles!

An Artist's Hack: Two ideas, one style?: Explains how we hacked our way through :stuckouttonguewinkingeye:

I also wrote a design post-mortem about the economy: A Designer's Tricks: Why Those Numbers

This is Vine and Void, a game where you just chill in a community on the edge of the world. Stuff's happening, but that's not super important, you can just explore and talk to people. Say hi, see what's going on around the community, and maybe save the world... Take your time, there isn't any countdowns, no one's gonna die. Oh yeah, you've also got this neat vine ability, I hope that it helps you on your journey!

The game's also got an amazing atmosphere, courtesy of @clockmaker's masterfully crafted soundtrack. I dunno how he made such perfect music, but it really sets the mood. He actually made four little tracks that play in a random order, and it sounds great.

If you're interested, you can play the game here. Regardless of whether you play or not, I wish you all the best! Also thanks again to my musician friend, ClockMaker, who has made so many incredible soundtracks for my games! I dunno where I'd be without him. And thank you for reading to the end! :heart:

It's available on all platforms, including web! :smiley:

So if you have some spare minutes, I would greatly appreciate your feedback!

I made a quick video about the game, but there is also info on the game's page, and in the game itself.

Thanks in advance! :slight_smile:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/boiling-planet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGbjUZA6zBI

We did create a game that celebrates and glorifies the wholesale slaughter of the little gits... If you ever thought Duck Hunt was a little unfair, come see what happens when you arm the Anatidaes.

Check out For Ducks' Sake!

A cute little retro 8 way endless shooter.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/for-ducks-sake

Hey everyone,

I am Monish H. Vyas, an indie game developer from India. This was my second Ludum Dare and third overall participation in game jams and boy it gets better every time you participate. This time around however has been very different experience and taught me so many things. This competition I could witness the result of my tardiness right in front of me. I am sharing here my journey of 3 days during the competition.

I like to prepare a couple of days in advance for Ludum Dare as I have knowledge of possible themes. What I usually do is plan very little about all the themes so that when the theme is finalized I can already have some idea and it helps me start in the right direction. However for this time I only realized about LD one day prior to final theme voting. At this point I had given up and planned to not participate in the jam just like 2 other game jams I chickened out earlier.

On the first day of the Jam I woke up 5 hours after the theme was finalized (Theme was announced 6:30 AM). Ya I woke up at 11:30 on the first day of the game jam. In my mind I already gave up and was starting to think about what I could have made have I participated in. So after 3-4 hours of mindless scrolling and napping I happened to have an idea of what I could make. I decided to make a text adventure (I made one in an earlier jam), but this time I decided to have choices rather than user guessing what action to take. So I decided to take part in the jam (Half-heatedly) and thus began my awful journey of Ludum Dare 46.

I played a game "Kyle is famous" and I absolutely loved that game and decided to make something inspired(*cough copied) from it. So I quickly made some simple UI that was completely different from the game I played.

I added some nice UI transitions and sketched some idea that would work with the current theme. At the end of day one I had complete functioning menu with animations. On the second day I wrote the scripts to navigate through stories based on user interactions and planned to have multiple endings which can be explored making different choices. All this time the most important part was missing and that was the story itself. Towards the end of the second day I realized that I may need to change some programming and mechanics based on the story and thus the aspects of the game seemed complete started to feel unfinished. And everything started to fall apart.

On day 3 I woke up knowing I only need story and a few adjustments to complete the game. Boy was I wrong. After adding a few dialogues of the game I started feeling the game is not that interesting and felt like clicking buttons here and there and so I decided to take a break for an hour to start with a fresh mind. That break worked in all the wrong way as I was having second thoughts about the game and having new ideas to develop the game. In all these I took the worst decision and that was to scrap everything I did and start on a new idea from scratch.

And so I started working on the assets. The initial idea was to keep the game as simple as possible. So I started drawing a black hole and some simple spaceships. And the idea was to keep the black-hole alive by feeding it the spaceships and avoiding meteors (Some accurate astrophysics right there). In few minutes the idea changed to feeding a human and avoiding bad food. Time was the luxury I couldn't afford, so I went with the later idea and thus born Gannet (Very accurately named by my friend). After all the artwork I wrote a couple of scripts and the game was looking good already. I planned to have a background and some popup effects for later and if time allowed.

After playing and changing some variables for difficulty settings I compromised with what I had and went for dinner break. After the break I tested it some more and decided to add a dimension of difficulty by increasing the "items to avoid", but that went wrong somehow and wasn't working intended. This was before 4-5 hours were left for the deadline. I felt everything falling apart once again and I started giving up again from the jam. But I tried to push it till the end and I am glad I could finish at least a working product. Even though it has a few bugs and feels duct taped, it still functions as a game and I am happy with it. And glad that I submitted it.

During these 3 days the most important thing I learned is the importance of planning. Have I given enough thought and spent more time with pen and paper rather than starting to work mindlessly on the first idea I had I could have made a better game, a game that looks finished and has that juice. So even if I couldn't make a decent game I learned a lot and that's why I shared this experience with you guys as well. I hope you all had better experience and result than I had Best of luck to all.

If you would like to give it a shot, here's my game Keep Gannet Alive.

https://monishvyas.itch.io/keep-gannet-alive

Thank you all for bearing this long postmortem.

keep his carnivorous alive and make it grow. but don't get caught by the neighbor

[Play now] or [Rate]

Firstly, we all had a blast making our game, we didn't really expect to finish this, since it is our first game jam we took somewhat seriously, let alone get as much attention as we got. Thank you so much for the feedback, we really were complimented for the things we were going for. We learned a lot from the said feedback and we can't wait for the next jam to put into practice the new things we have learned! This game will stand as our first game to ever be completed through all the dropped projects we started and never finished. https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/exolvuntur

Finally it's time to collect games for our Play & Rate streams!

If you created a game and want us to play and rate it on twitch, submit it here: https://forms.gle/Q2cSiLpyfELmc5Cp8

Looking forward to having a talk on stream :)

Yes, i have rated multiple games already and it still has not changed in the last 1 hour or so So i decided to do it this way, Please play/rate: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/hanging-by-a-copper-wire

Hey, usually we've gotten a check mark here after around 20 ratings given, does anyone know what the criteria is now or is there another system doing with our ratings received cause we already have 25 given? (or something like that) We also have good karma because we've given really good feedback, but if anyone knows how the check mark thing works and how it affects anything, please let us know :)

(oh and we will rate more games anyways, just curious about this..)

Hi everyone, The Boredom Ministy is proud to take you with us on the journey of the creation of "THE PATH".

You can play the game here and don't forget to rate us !

We would like to push further the game and add several levels.

I started dressing up some of the tiles, added some more while I was at it, trying out some flower arrangement ad trying to get a feel of what the different areas of their little journey could have.

All that whil trying to retain a good read on the objects layedout on the screen.

Have a nice day everyone !

You can play the game here and don't forget to rate us !

Quali sono i sintomi dell'autismo, una malattia congenita o acquisita?

I am out of home for 2 days, I have a Mac now (yeah mac and apple sucks)

please submit your great HTML5 or Android games.

also if you have a decision based game, please tell me It will get high priority. I am trying to study those because my game is all about decisions : so yours will get priority. I am also making a list for them. I will publish it and mention you.

try our game here https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/mammoth-expedition

also if you have strategy game it will get high priority because I like them.

This is my 5th Ludum Dare and I've always wondered how to get more people to play your game past a certain point. Clearly just rating/commenting on tons of games doesn't do much after first 50 ratings. Making blog posts can also help, but at some point you run out of actually useful/interesting content to post about.

But making posts asking for people to send you their game (like this post :wink:) actually works really well. You tend to get higher quality games that are more fun to play and it creates a bit of connection between you and the person who's game you played so there's a higher chance they'll play your game as well.

So send me your HTML5 games and I'll be sure to play/rate/comment.

And consider trying out our game as well: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/final-flower-petals-of-a-lost-age

During my LD-brainstorm I came up with "Keeping an idea alive" as one of my possible games. When fleshing different ideas out, this one had a leg up because the way I would do it would involve webscraping, something I haven't tried before. It seemed pretty straightforward but after I submitted the game it turned out it didn't work for 90% of people ( see the zero score and full (7) lives above). This was very frustrating but in the end I found the bug was due to the different way countries seperate digits larger than a thousand e.g. 321,000 or 321.000. This was five days after submission and it would've taken me way longer if it wasn't for https://ldjam.com/users/trexxak and https://ldjam.com/users/goutye helping me debug a bug I didn't have myself. Go play their games !

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/tiriplici https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/princess-ribbon

LD46 has been a very exhilarating jam! Not just from game creation, but the rating period too! This is my 3rd Ludum Dare, and during the rating period there is so much variety of different games to play! Not only from the amount of entries, but also the amount of unique concepts out there, devs have really taken on this theme and produced amazing games! Well done to everyone who has made a game for this jam! If you have a game and haven't quite reached those 20 ratings, leave a link in the comments of this post and I will have a go if I can! If you have already got 20 ratings, still leave a link and I'll try to have a go!

Good luck to everyone throughout the rest of the rating period!

So last week, I took my part in my first ever Ludum Dare!

How It Began?

For the past few months, I've been watching devlogs of youtubers not having any idea that the Ludum Dare had already already started. On Monday, the last day of submission, I saw a youtuber livestreaming his Ludum Dare Game. I was shocked! Got on the website, saw only 7 hours and 34 minutes left!!

At first, I was feeling down that I missed this Ludum Dare. Thought about just letting this one go. But then, I saw that the next Ludum Dare would be in October, and I really did not want to wait that long to submit a game! I was just impatient, so I decided to go for it!

The Process

I sat down at my desk, opened Aseprite and started drawing some pixel art, because pixel art makes me go YES! I did not have any idea of what kind of character I should draw! I took a break after spending 1 hour and responded some messages on my phone. Then I saw the last two emojis in my recent and got the idea of making the emoji enemies! :laughing: As for the player, it's just a square and a triangle mixed up! :laughing:

After opening Unity, I already had two types of game in mind! One horizontal shooter and the other one top-down shooter! I went for the latter since I wanted the game to appear like Geometry Dash. I never made a top-down shooter before so I went on Blackthorprod's youtube channel. He has one of the best content for Unity learners. After completing the player movement, the shooting and the wave spawner, I went to help my dad with some work pending in my house!

2 hours left to submit and I needed to find a way to make the game fit the theme of the game jam. I then got the idea of decreasing energy and a stopwatch. The players need to keep the main character alive as long as possible! That's when I came up with the name Genki. It means 'Energy' in japanese. While developing the game, I already I would include synthwave in game. Why? Because SYNTHWAVE ROCKS! :fire: I used Eva's music since it has the Creative Commons Licence. Here's the link to that awesome music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVTsD4UPT-k I did not have much trouble for sound effects since I used SFXR!

20 minutes left! I created an Itch.io account, hosted my game, and completed my submission in Ludum Dare 46! WOOOHOOOO! :fire:

The Results

"Getting that 20 ratings is impossible for a game like this". This came in my mind after submitting my game! I was happy that I atleast participated in the jam! Tired, I went to sleep! The next day, my game got 6 ratings with some nice comments from people. I was like WHAT?! The ratings kept increasing for the next day! People were actually liking the game! Despite the off-screen bug and the dead-end situation, people were playing my game! One even made a highscore!

On the third day, my game got the 20 ratings! I was so happy about it that I literally started to cry! :scream:

Now Genki is at 75.5 ratings and this is all because off this beautiful community! THANK YOU FOR PLAYING GENKI! :fire:

Here's the game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/genki

There will be a post-jam version that I will be working on. New Enemies, new features! But for now I've been playing the games submitted for the jam and it is so FUN! Do send me your games here. It can be any game on any platform! I already have a folder where I install all the Ludum Dare games I play, so, installation files, executable files, archived files, HTML5 games, not a problem! I really want to see the amazing work of the developers, so don't hesitate! :smile:

Just wanted to let you guys know that you can also rate the hungry hungry very very hungry cat :)

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/hungry-hungry-hungry-very-very-hungry-cat

If you have participated in Ludum Dare any of the past 45 times, you probably know that in order to get ratings on your game you will need to rate other games. If you voted on 20-25 games, you where almost guaranteed to get 20+ votes on your own game. But this is no longer the case!

With the old system you would get Smart-balance points (what games are sorted after) for your first 50 ratings, and all of the :hearts: you received on your comments on other peoples games.

With the new system you will only get Smart-balance points for your first 5 ratings. After you have rated 5 games you will no longer climb the list of games by only rating. The only way to climb past this point is to receive :hearts: on your comments, this is capped at 100. After reaching this it is now impossible to gain more smart balance points.

TLDR; You need to leave detailed feedback, not just rate, or your game wont gain visibility.

Source: * https://twitter.com/mikekasprzak/status/1252974822537265152 * https://github.com/ludumdare/ludumdare/commit/5480f71d98eeb3622f50627d3d300f97d0681f53

While your 32th version of your MasterOrgan looks promising, you have to go through the whole test battery to ensure its reliability before any release.

Play Cells here

And rate it there

Things really slowed down in the last couple of days, huh? Let’s bring you up to speed with even more awesome games I found!

Last Beer Run away from rude people trying to get your last, hard earned beverage!

Pigeon Ascent Sore to the olymp of Pigeonkind, face and defeat your maker!

Rocket Maniacs Accelerate above the roofs of New Helsinki!

Minor Inconvenience Make haste or be fired!

Zoo keeper ... and then calm down again with the cutest minigame collection you’ll ever find :3

More to come! Again, I don’t want to spam the feed too much, but worry not, there’s still more. There’s always more.

If you're interested in more great games I found, do take a look at my previous highlights

#3 #2 #1

Hey guys, if you have a few minutes to spare check out my game! I also wanted to try something. There are four different characters in my game and I would love it if you could play all 4 and comment which one was your favorite in terms of design and weaponry.

LINK: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/exterminators

*your games.

Thanks in advance.

Click here to provide nourishment

We would love to hear what you think!

Let your past self guide you through an experience of art, music, and friendship.

Please play the game in full-screen and use headphone. 😊

Check the game here: Missing Pieces

Includes WebGL version for your convenience

So we created a game that celebrates and glorifies the wholesale slaughter of the little gits... If you ever thought Duck Hunt was a little unfair, come see what happens when you arm the Anatidaes.

Check out For Ducks' Sake!

A cute little retro 8 way endless shooter.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/for-ducks-sake

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/brainstorm https://shakedimus.itch.io/brainstorm

So I did a google search on our game Oak Defenders and funny enough I found it hosted on several sites we didn't upload it to.

• A hack website that added cheat codes to the game

  • http://www.arcadeprehacks.com/game/35125/oak-defenders.html

• A chinese website that added the game

  • http://www.17yy.com/f/play/242446.html

• A Brazilian website that added the game

  • https://baixefacil.com.br/download/oak-defender

The most interesting thing to me, was that the site that added the cheat codes currently has 3187 Plays which is way higher than our itch.io page amount.

Play the official version here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/oak-defenders

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRBIJAJ1_HE&feature=youtu.be

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/spotted

Looking back I couldn't be prouder to have been involved with such a fun project and great team. Special credit to @Entevily who somehow managed to balance his family life while doing the vast majority of the programming for this project. He recently told me he's just about physically and mentally recovered from that weekend, here it is:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/fill-up-yum-yums-tum-tum - Browser links available on our LD page

Hopefully it was worth it for him, looking forward to working more with this project as we plan to expand upon it in the future!

Do you want to make a desktop game like our entry Desktop Garden?
Take a look at Desktopia a free library we just released!

Hey there!

After participating this Ludum Dare for the first time i also uploaded my first two youtube videos.

First one is a Playthrough: SPOILER ALERT ! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXHewd8485A

Second one is a Speedrun: SPOILER ALERT ! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNlF-IT7ovE

If you want to experience the game yourself before watching the videos you can download a build for Linux or Windows from here: https://linluk.itch.io/signal-fire-on-mystery-island

enjoy :smiley:

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

BURN XXXXXX https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/gas XXXXX

After two hard-working days of my life I was so exhausted and unfortunately not very proud with the result. After the first day my code was a real spaghetti and I didn't have fun while working on it anymore. I finished the game, but then I just wanted to forget about it. But now, when I see some comments says about game so positively I think it's not as bad as I think... I hope. Here's my LD entry and tomorrow I'm going to play some games and return to this great community. Love ya! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/hell-td

Game Page: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/mr-cheesy

New version with added features:

• Lucky Power-Up boxes!
• Mouse Traps..what else can I say..you now have mouse traps!
• Backround changes slowly color after reaching specific milestones!
• Available as WebGL build!

Game Page: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/mr-cheesy

After competing in our first game jam together, Beth and I have already gotten a lot of reviews. We would love it if more people reviewed and left some feedback for our game.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/lettuce-be-friends

I made my game with unreal engine with the latest version of the engine. If you don't know, they decided to remove support for exporting Html5 games. Now you have to build the engine from source and try to implement the html5 export by yourself following some guidelines on github. I tried but I failed for now. There's also the new pixel streaming plug-in, it's really great. You can stream your game but it's limited and it can become very costly if you decide to host it in the cloud.

I like to make simple games and exploring little game mechanics and share them. Also, I really like using unreal engine. So I keep wondering if I should change my tools, like using Unity or Godot to make web versions. Because sharing and having people playing my game is a big part of my pleasure. Also, for the bigger picture, what if you see an interesting game prototype on Twitter or elsewhere and you want to try it? Would you download the build or skip it if there's not html5 version? What do you think?

Edit : I finally managed to make the HTML5 export working with Unreal Engine but I had to use some tricks for the visuals.

The Atari 2600 is a funny console. It requires the CPU to do some of the work involved in generating the video signal. For this reason, you can generate a 262 line signal (which is the standard for NTSC TV), even though the hardware is for the PAL standard. It works, at least on my TV, but the colors are wrong. I fixed that. So if you own a PAL version of Atari 2600, you can now play Whale Dive with nicer colors. It also makes the game run somewhat slower, which makes it easier! Have fun!

Comment A Link To your Game And I'll Play It

Just Comment your game's Link and i'll Play, Rate it, and maybe Write a comment. I want to try Playing them all.

If it's ok from you, Please consider Play and Rate my Game "Message" too. it will help me alot.

played like 79 games till now lol.

I'll attempt to play and provide feedback within the next 24 hours.

Link to compo entry if interested https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/going-to-find-out. Windows Only :(

ignore this

Play the game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/keep-ivan-trotsky-alive

Hey!

I will play, rate and write a comment your game, if you play and then rate mine.

• ❗ Your game must be playable ONLINE (itch.io,...) or downloadable on Mac OSX.
• ❗ You have to rate and comment my game and end the comment with "at character" @ so I know that you are the one, who came there from this post.

MY GAME: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/save-the-fox

Play the game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/keep-ivan-trotsky-alive

Hey!

I will play, rate and write a comment your game, if you play and then rate mine.

• ❗ Your game must be playable ONLINE (itch.io,...) or downloadable on Mac OSX.
• ❗ You have to rate and comment my game and end the comment with "at character" @ so I know that you are the one, who came there from this post.

MY GAME: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/save-the-fox

Analysis

When I started this game jam I was already 10 hours late, so my expectations for what I'd achieve weren't that high. I mainly used it as excuse to take a break from my other personal projects and experiment with procedural animation. Being my first Ludum Dare and my first solo game jam I was very surprised with what I had achieved within the time given.

The game felt somewhat 'finished', with a functional title menu, ending, and even an Icon for the playable build. Apart from a few minor issues that I'll explore in more depth below, the game felt functional and is my best GameJam to date. I'll certainly be taking part in the next Ludum Dare.

2D Game Development in Unity
The Unity game engine has advanced a lot over the last few years. There are some fantastic new tools and workflows available for which I am very grateful - without these new tools I would never have been able to make this game. Although the final game is very short, I had managed to develop a workflow for creating environments that was efficient and looked somewhat polished. This workflow influenced the art direction of the game and relied heavily on the new 2D Rigging, IK and Lighting systems available.

Procedural Animation
I've attempted procedural animation a few times in the past but this by far the best progress I've made on it to date. The procedural legs snap to the floor and can walk on pretty much any type of terrain. Although the code is quite messy, it won't be too difficult to replicate and produce a foundation for future attempts at procedural animation.

There are still a few minor issues which will need correcting, such as a slight amount of leg stutter and the creature occasionally climbing to places it's not supposed to. The later issue resulted in the creature standing over a re-spawn point and creating an infinite death loop for some players... Not ideal.

The new 2D Rigging and IK tools available served as the foundation for the procedural animation system. Previous attempts at coding my own IK system proved time consuming and difficult, so this out-of-the-box system made my life a lot easier. I wrote an article on how I created my procedural animation using the these tools here: https://www.tomstephensondeveloper.co.uk/post/2d-procedural-animation-in-unity

2D Lighting and Visual Style
With the recent release of the Universal Render Pipeline (URP) in Unity it is now possible to light up your 2D scenes. I'm fairly new to the URP and this was my first time using the new 2D lighting systems.

I didn't really have a plan for the visual style of the game as I mainly wanted to focus on game mechanics and procedural animation. The initial environment was built out of a single grey square sprite that was duplicated and resized a bunch of times. Whilst taking a break from coding I experimented with different tones and layers for the environment, starting with a dark black for the foreground. This gave a nice element of depth, with the harsh angles and layers somewhat resembling a cave - this became the setting for the game.

My knowledge of colour theory is fairly limited so I knew I wouldn't have time to experiment with different colour palettes. I certainly didn't have enough time to create my own sprites either (apart from the leg sprite I made for the creature), so I settled for the black and grey aesthetic created out of duplicated squares.

I soon realised that my scene felt too bright and that it was time to learn how to use the new lighting systems. I converted the project to the URP and initially panicked when I realised my entire scene was pitch black. Using a series of 2D point-lights the game had a completely different feel to the previous unlit scene. There was a stronger sense of depth and confinement which gave the game a gloomy atmosphere.

Considering I never set out to make a game with good visuals I am more than happy with the end result. The use of square sprites allowed for rapid prototyping and it didn't take much work to add the additional layers. Each layer was grouped in a parent object and the ground / ceiling layers were given 2DCompositeColliders which made the game more efficient.

I had accidentally created an evocative and atmospheric art style out of squares and some lighting, which became one of the most liked aspects of the game and a leading factor in further design decisions.

Gameplay
The cave setting worked well with the sound mechanic I had created for the game. Every time the player lands on the ground it creates a sound, shown to the player as a growing ring that overlays the screen. This mechanic is further explored by the player throwing collectable stones which make a sound upon landing on the ground, and by popping eggs that appear later in the game.

The other creatures found within the game are blind and are attracted to sound, using it as a way to navigate the environment and hunt prey.

To help teach the use of this mechanic I created a glowing light creature that follows the player at the start of the game. The player needs to encourage the creature to follow them through the first section, using it to see obstacles ahead of them. There was no definitive exit transition for the creature so many players got confused when it stopped following them, even though it was no longer required. This segment of the game also contained no actual hazards which made the experience feel somewhat flat and is something that will need addressing.

Feedback for the sound mechanic has been very positive with many people wanting more. One of the main complaints (and an issue I have with the game myself) is that the mechanic did not get explored to its full potential, with only one puzzle being created.

Post Jam Development

As previously mentioned, this was my first Ludum Dare. The other game jams I have participated in did not put as much of an emphasis on playing and reviewing each others games, so this has been a very different experience for me. I am so proud and honestly a little overwhelmed with the number of ratings and the amount of feedback received. It was completely unexpected and is so inspiring. I have also enjoyed playing and reviewing your games and will continue to try out as many as possible.

Thank you for your kind words and feedback, it means a lot.

This game has proven to be a great proof of concept and as a result of the overwhelmingly positive feedback received I have made the decision to continue developing the game for the foreseeable future, putting aside my other personal projects for the time being.

During the development I will be exploring the sound mechanic in much more depth by creating a series of puzzles and varied enemy types that interact with sound differently.

I can't wait to share what comes next, thank you.

If you haven't seen the game and would like some context, here's a link to the Desktop and Browser versions of my game:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/the-quiet-caves

https://www.twitch.tv/pomothedog

Submit here:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScwyAj1WLkFEPwi1PnOiywtBVfvVxzYfehu2psY6tDFPA-DIQ/viewform?fbzx=-1292295655891380072

After a lot of positive feedback on our jam game Hive Preserver, we started working on a full alien character controller. You can climb walls, ceilings, and even rotating objects.

https://youtu.be/-Aw_R7h2niw

You are a newborn alien, abducted from your home by evil scientists. They are trying to destroy your hive. You must return quickly if you want to keep it alive...

Hive Preserver is a fast-paced first-person alien action game:

Play our LD46 jam game: Hive Preserver

Follow us on Twitter on YouTube or on Facebook

Hey!

I will play, rate and write a comment your game, if you play and then rate mine.

• ❗ Your game must be playable ONLINE (itch.io,...) or downloadable on Mac OSX.
• ❗ You have to rate and comment my game and end the comment with "at character" @ so I know that you are the one, who came there from this post.

MY GAME: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/save-the-fox

Hi everyone, after getting some really good feedback from multiple different people, I decided that I wan't to continue development on The Deepest Level after my finals are over. I had plans for additional content and I will finally be able to add them.

It would be really nice to get the game to 20 ratings in time, but I'm going to work on it nonetheless.

Content Planned to be added:

-Rework to the Jumping Mechanics and Physics to make the platforming more enjoyable

-Many Additional Levels

-Enemy Loot

-Upgrades to be purchased in between levels via gold collected

-Randomized Loot Chests

-More Enemy Types

-More Boss Fights

-A New Playable Character

Play the Game here!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/the-deepest-level

I might only be able to start tomorrow but I'll try my best to do the quickly :smile:

All Systems Grow: Play the Game Jam Version

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/all-systems-grow-ld46-keep-it-alive [HTML5 & EXE]

Post Jam Update

I have taken some time away from the new finite state machine code in order to do something a little more creative.. Now with colours and lighting but hopefully a similar moodiness - still WIP! The TWEET

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This is the first concept art. What do you think?

You can play the jam version here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/solar

Thanks to everyone who's rated for your feedback and positive comments! I am so glad that you all enjoyed your frying pan-eating, jetpack-flying, Communist gardening shop-opening adventure all in the name of keeping your company alive! To those who haven't played it yet, what are you waiting for? https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/irving-forrest-technologies-and-redacted

Hello Jammers!

We’re playing your games live on Twitch. If you’d like your entry featured, kindly drop it in our form or join us in chat! We love having devs in chat with us and we’ll prioritize those games, but we also highlight every game in case you can’t join live.

When: 3:45-6:45 PM EDT today

Where: https://twitch.tv/cyberlightgames

What: The next installment of Ludum Dare to Play 46!

Note: We were unable to participate in the Jam this time so we cannot officially rate anyone, but we would still love to play your game and get you some feedback!

This is going to be a bit more of a technical dive on the map generation in Cacophony.

I got a bit carried away so this post is a bit long but I hope its informative!

Map Generation

Procedural generation of maps is arguably one of the most iconic properties of roguelike games, because of this we had to make sure we got it right. As I had some experience creating a similar script in a previous unity project this task fell on me.

So I got to work.

The generation in our game is based on the methodology from a popular roguelike tutorial using a python library called libtcod. The basic process followed by this tutorial is as follows:

1. Fill the specified area with walls
2. Carve rooms out of this area by deleting walls and placing floors in rectangles
3. Connect the current room with hallways
4. Determine what type of room has been generated and place the proper extra characteristics within the room
5. Repeat for the specified number of rooms

There was, however a few issues with using this tutorial namely:

1. This tutorial is meant for python, not C# and especially not Unity
2. This tutorial represented every wall with the same “Sprite” (really a character in most cases)
3. While I am sure they get to it eventually, the section I read did not have different types of rooms generated

        More traditional roguelike couresty of my co-developer Scott

One of our generated maps

Our Implementation

There are 3 main classes involved in the generation of maps in our game

GridGenerator.cs – Handles the generation aspect

MapInfo.cs – This is a scriptural object that contains variables used to generate the map, stores information such as the x and y bounds, the current tileset, and the list of enemies to be spawned in this map

Map.cs – This class contains static dictionaries used to reference the different tile layers using their (x,y) coordinate as a key. This class is responsible for populating these dictionaries after the game has been loaded.

If you’re interested in seeing the code in full for these classes click here

There is also a Rect class that handles some aspects of the room generation, but I don’t feel this is a good implementation in its current form and would recommend against our current setup.

GridGenerator.cs

For the most part, this class follows the tutorial linked above to a tee. Below is some of the code that had to be handmade to have our display work properly. Essentially all this does is place the proper sprites on the edges of the room so that they can visually look better than just having a flat wall sprite.

It’s game jam code, go easy on me

Further down, in the GenerateMap() function we have another slight deviation from the tutorial script. We wanted to generate different types of rooms so we could have stores, traps, exits to a further floor, etc. The counter is basically a hacky way of making sure that we always generate one and only one kitchen, store, and exit.

the room variable is the room we are currently generating, this function will be called after the room has been carved out and hallways generated.

I can’t explain why the usage of that counter – switch statement combo feels wrong but it does…

The functions being called on the room object belong to the Rect class, I am not sure is the best way to break up this code but it’s what we came up with in the time allotted.

I’ll only show a few examples so you can get an idea, because this is most likely the messiest code in the entire project.

Believe it or not, this is some of the better code from this section

Now, if you’re reading this in hopes to learn how to do some map generation please do not copy and paste this code, it is ugly ugly ugly and one of the first things I will be refactoring but it got the job done for the time we had.

MapInfo.cs

MapInfo is a Scriptable Object class, if you don’t know what that means I spent my first post on this blog talking about them! Alternatively, you can go straight to the resources I learned from this excellent blog post by Daniel Ilett.

To sum it up real quickly scriptable objects are a Unity class that are very good for storing data independent of game objects and with very easy serialization.

Here’s what our usage of them looks like:

The entirety of this class

The first section of variables lines 9-15 contains some general information about the map that will be useful to players,enemies and the grid generator.

All of the variables here are pretty self explanatory, the tiles and enemies are fed into the grid generator so that it knows what tiles to use and the boundaries determine where the map starts and stops generating.

What this allows us to do is create a Unity asset entirely in the editor for each different tileset and set the enemies and dimensions in there without changing any code at all!

An example of what this object looks like in the Unity inspector

This is one of the better design choices we made during the jam as it allowed our map generation to be flexible even for our team members who did not know how to code.

Map.cs

This is the class that glues this whole thing together to work in our project.

It contains two dictionaries with every relevant tile that we can then access using the tiles (x,y) coordinates. This is how we handle movement, combat, and interaction with special objects.

What this class does is quite simple but the implementation can seem a bit confusing.

Thank God for stackoverflow

What happens is the tilemap object has a collider that scales when a tile is placed, we use this to get the x,y bounds of an this object and then we iterate every x,y position in world space and create a MapTile object (This is a data class that I will likely rewrite soon) and store it in the dictionary.

Most of the time when we reference this dictionary we are checking whether the requested tile is a floor or a wall.

Wrapping Up

All in all, I don’t think this seems like the most complex take on map generation I have ever seen and it is really a stringing together of different tutorials until we had something manageable. But it worked well for our game and most importantly we were able to get it done in the time frame we had.

This is a section of the code I spent a lot of Ludum Dare working on, and as we continue to develop the game I have no doubts this will continue to be the case.

Yes you read that right, we are going to continue developing Cacophony because we’re all having so much fun working on it.

The first update will release the same day Ludum Dare voting ends May 12th.

Cacophony: The Ballad of the Celestial Goblin-King is a procedurally-generated roguelike dungeon crawler created in 72 hours for Ludum Dare.

The first update to Cacophony will be released May 12th.

You can try the game in your browser here.

Wow, it's been more than a week now since this Ludum Dare has ended! Time flies as they say!

I wanted to write this post to thank you all, especially these who rated and commented on my game! (90 ratings, I'm so >//<) It's been an honour to receive all of this feedback!

At the time I am writing this, I have tried out 81 games, and as the following chart indicates, these were amazing (congrats to you all!)

Here are some of my favorites, in no specific order: - https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/the-negotiator - https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/destructive-reconstruction - https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/gooperworm - https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/keep-me-breathing - https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/big-buddy - https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/the-lizard-in-the-owls-nest - https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/the-protective-samuraii - https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/planet-guardian - https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/beat-sturgeon - https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/sisters-lighthouse - https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/feed-the-panda - https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/filicide - https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/ecorobotical - https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/alive-1 - https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/unended - https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/save-the-president - https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/archimagus - https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/shadoweight-a-moguel-tale - https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/heading-north - https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/last-lantern - https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/fleur-defense - https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/leader-keep-them-alive - https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/cat-dad-redemption

I don't plan on trying out many more games (sadly), as I have other duties (i-e school [fun fact: I have learned today that I was accepted in the university I applied for :D]) uwu'

I also wanted to do a small advertisement toward my social networks, especially youtube and twitter, as I plan to make a smol video describing my experience with this first Ludum dare for me uwu (sorry for this, I don't really like making ads): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsDms14VI1jZssfZFMheU2w https://twitter.com/Sheinxy

Love! I hope to participate in another Ludum Dare!

Come check out our game Hyperhop: Galactic Lancer! It's a bossrush game where you fight planets!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/hyperhop-galactic-lancer

https://www.twitch.tv/pomothedog

I will only play your game if you are in chat!

Submissions:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-hRr8wSoY5vsAzXwsnQkr67O_aieO3Lpp96qne6Irmc/edit#gid=1632813017