Finally finished something related to gamedev

The theme submission has lots of repetitions, re-submissions, and memes

Maybe there should be one theme submission per user..

Hi all, what are the free alternatives to Bosca Ceoil? I would like something a bit less beepy (if that makes sense) - it sort of always reminds me of chip tunes.

For the first time ever, I actually went through every single theme. Lots of repetition of course. Seems like people haven't been enjoying the meme suggestions (ex. "No... I don't think you get it... Islands... BUT FLOATING!") but they kept it entertaining for me. I do think it would be better if each person only got one suggestion though.

I don't know how the rest of you do it... I'm only a third of the way through the slaughter. Things keep getting in the way, like doing work or spending a half-hour writing down a complex game idea that was inspired by one of these themes. But anyway, I figured I could post this now and possibly do follow ups later if I found more.

When slaughtering themes, I have a rule that the theme shouldn't limit the game genre or the type of game. So there's been several themes that I have to slaughter on that rule that regardless of if I think could make interesting game from it. Here's some I came across: * You are a tile - Implies the use of tilesets and games where you have an overhead view or sidescroll, but I can imagine a short puzzle game where you have to cover holes in the tilemap for NPCs to walk over or interact with. * Fleeting Memory / revisiting memories - There imply a story-based game. And possibly an interesting one, if done right. * Snowball fight - I don't think I've yet seen a game that did a proper snowball fight that wasn't just using some preexisting combat system, but I also can't see how one does this in a story-based or puzzle game unless it's just background dressing maybe. * Second Person Shooter - I've seen this game already. It's called "Zato". You watch from the pov of the enemies and had to line up the player character to fire on them. Interesting concept, but not a good theme. * Multiple Beginnings, One End - An interesting concept if you were to put it into a narrative video game, as long as that one end is not just "and then they die". But kinda precludes other genres. * Social Samurai - I feel like the person who submitted this had a very specific game in mind... Like one of those social combat games. * You are a one sided lover - This one just seems tragic when ported to something that's not a narrative game. Like imagine this inspiring a first-person shooter. No, wait, let's not.

Here's some other themes that simply struck me before I slaughtered them: * No penguins allowed - Wouldn't that mean that every game that doesn't include a penguin is following the theme by default? * Siege the moment - I can't decide if someone misspelled "seize" and autocorrect did them wrong, or if someone seriously wants us to make a game about setting up a blockade around a moment in time... * World Wild Web - Again, misspelling, or a network of animals? I'm thinking something that might be found on that old kids show Zaboomafoo. * Mom's spaghetti - Well, at least it wasn't "time", "light", "death", "reality", "evil" or one of the other abstract concepts that made up like 70% of the other themes I slaughtered, but one has to wonder if this person was in the process of being called down to dinner when making their theme suggestions.

https://youtu.be/c1mNVUKZgnU

Remember my game Just delete them? I've been doing some things since the release like:

• new graphics,
• new music,
• new mechanics,
• "transition",
• loading screen,
• audio system,
• sound effects,
• and other crap,

Now I'm working on the "transition". It this little break where instead of a normal level a new loads up. It has to do with the story.

Here's the list of videos that I've made on this: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXzMHCfDkalss3VLr1mkcszTbvduhF_vV

So excited for next weekend! The last two times have been a blast, I'm sure this one will be too :D

Finally done!

"Magic is Illegal" was imo the best suggestion. It's actually really open ended, i.e. you can't have magic as a mechanic, or it could be a story element where you do have magic and fight the man, or you can circumvent it all together by having a magic system but just giving it technology skin or something similair. It's a restriction that gives you all the options in terms of mechanics or story.

My suggestions were: ruin, in the clouds, and something I can't remember :sweat_smile:

There were definitely a lot of duplicates. Since everyone is giving ideas, I think theme suggestions should only be open to people who have participated in at least 2 theme slaughters in the past, and only 1 suggestion per user.

It took me over 20 minutes to go through these few.

I'm not dying here of theme slaughter today!

Next up, Theme Voting :8ball:

Hello, fellow jammers!

Last year, I started working on a piece of software to procedurally generate random music. I haven't made any improvements since then, but it's functional, and I thought there was a chance that someone here could find a use for it.

Pytchie

It's not much, but you have some control over the voices, tempo, and chords. From there, it randomly generates notes and rhythms and a WAV file pops out.

You can download it or listen to sample outputs from my Github.

Let me know if you end up using/forking/experimenting with it!

2 full days to get through all of them.

Hey all you givers of games,

After you finish making your awesome Ludum Dare games, why not make a game for the Philosophy Game Jam #2. This time around the jam will have a slightly more specific theme than just "philosophy." For the second Philosophy Game Jam, we will be making games related to ethics and technology. Some possible routes to take with this theme include, but are not limited to, games about ethical game design, games about cloning, games about the ethical issues surrounding AI.

One special feature of this jam is that it is being run in conjunction with an academic conference on ethics and technology held at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The games you make will be featured as part of the Ethics and Technology Bazaar.

Here's a link to the jam's page on itchio: https://itch.io/jam/philgamejam-2

Taking place throughout the whole month of October will be the first Abstract Horror Game Jam!

https://itch.io/jam/abstract-horror-jam

What is abstract horror, you ask? It's a term I invented, loosely defined as "horror that uses disembodied parts of the real world in an abstract environment to creep out the viewer". A great example of this is the mushroom smoke sequence in TAG (skip to 29:24):

https://youtu.be/2BSVkqcbC18?t=1764

Hope to see you there!

I've been saying for the past 4 days (or million years, however long this theme slaughter has been going on for, I can't tell anymore) that there seems to be several duplicate themes in this year's batch of themes, and that they should de-dupe the themes before giving them to us.

Turns out, no, it's just that the theme voting page is entirely broken.

There's been a few people in this feed that have pointed out that the recent themes list when you load the page is always the same. This I think is indicative of the bigger problem. The page seems to not be keeping track of the themes that have already been voted on entirely. I pulled open the JSON giving the web page all the themes to vote on. (Incidentally, the 10 themes on the recent list here are the first 10 themes in the JSON, go figure.) (EDIT: Just not in my screenshot, I just realized, because it's apparently keeping somewhere that I haven't voted on some of the themes, but it's not filtering out voting based on that?! What even is going on here...?)

"All about perspective" is in the list exactly once. But I've voted on it at least three times, once because I liked it, once again later as it was a duplicate (and that made my recent themes list all red, which I thought at the time was odd), and once more today, just now, and look, there's a green in my recent themes list that's there again!

"It's not a bug, it's a feature" is a distinctive theme that I remember not liking (why would you make a weird development concept into a game?), and I voted on it a second time just moments ago! I wondered how many times it had been submitted. I went and checked, and lo it's only in the JSON once. This whole exercise is now pointless if you can't do it in one sitting, because if you don't, you're going over old ground again, while simultaneously you'll never see some themes! Why even bother counting how many themes we've slaughtered if you're not going to keep track of which ones we've seen already!

Basically what I'm saying is, I'm giving up. I'd rather not have to rejudge the same 1500 themes again and again and again simply because I didn't do it in one sitting and got logged out. Now excuse me while I go upend a table.

Incidentally, while I have the JSON here:

• "Time" is a word in 87 submitted themes this time around (not counting where it's part of another word).
• "Space" is part of 32 submitted themes.
• "Light" is in 28 themes.
• "Power" is in 38 themes.
• "Death is in 23 themes, while "Life" is in 58 themes (not exclusive).
• "Islands" is only in 6 themes, the same number of times as "Climate".

Where can I find what my submitted themes were?