I stumbled upon some bugs during the LD37 gamedev process. Who doesn’t? =)
Here are some moments that I’ll remember and I thought I’d share them. Having my son finding it just as amusing as I am makes these moments and memories very special to me 
Three months ago I participated in my first Ludum Dare. It was was a very educational experience which I explained in more detail in my LD36 postmortem. One of the key takeaways was that I would either A) ensure that my wife and kids could be on a weekend trip somewhere, or B) limit the time I spend on my game entry so it wouldn’t make me anti-social during the weekend. This time around my family would be home during the weekend so I went for option B which I looked upon as a challenge itself.
PREPARATIONS
For a couple of weeks following LD36 I continued to practice Blender modelling, texturing, rigging, and animation. Blender was my weakest skill during LD36 and much time was spent looking at tutorials and troubleshooting my lack of skills during the competition itself. I box modeled some spaceships and rigged characters. I textured them as fast as I could. I managed to push time down to modelling and texturing a low poly spaceship in about 15 minutes. I wish I would have kept using Blender frequently up until LD37 but I started a new full time consultancy assignment and I also had to dedicate time to the house renovation so after September I did not keep active in Blender, unfortunately. I had to look at tutorials during LD37 too to properly use the Rigify addon and I also had problems with animations.
LD36 also taught me not to underestimate the time it takes to create the UI and game manager to maintain game states. I spent some time in September to touch up on some fundamental game states to have that clear in my mind for the next time around.
Finally, the evening before the event was about to start I verified that the OBS screen recorder and all the applications launched and worked as expected.
EXECUTION
Ludum Dare starts at 3am Swedish time so I went to bed at 10:30pm the night before and set my alarm for 2:50am. I snoozed for 10 minutes so after 4 hours and 30 minutes of sleep I woke up, made a cup of coffee and sat at the computer to find out the theme; One Room.
GAME DEV SESSION 1 (approx 03:20 – 08:00)
This time I started straight away to program the game state framework code and I created a new truetype font. This gave me time to think of ideas for the game while creating content that would be necessary regardless of what game I would make.
I did not have a clear game in mind but I had a vague feeling that I wanted to make something in a space hangar (one room) having a flash back to Space Quest 3 where you wake up in a junk room on a spaceship.
I proceeded to launch Blender and started to model a primitive astronaut. I like the anonymous look of them. Following a short box modelling phase, I debated whether to use the Rigify addon or manually create bones for the rig. I decided to go for Rigify because it makes it easier to animate the character but the downside is that the rig becomes very complex which takes some time to wrap your head around. I wasn’t sure if this would bite me later on in the process.
I continued to drink coffee and animate the character with a cartoonish walk cycle and some basic idle and jumping animations. I created the animation by googling for walk cycle animation references and manually setting the main poses to transition between with key frames. I verified that it would work to import into Unity. So far so good. I was very pleased with the arcade-feel of the walk cycle.
My son woke up around 8am and came in to greet me, excited to see what was going on. We had breakfast together and then the two little girls and my wife woke up.
The first session came to a close at around 8:30am on the Saturday morning.
Status after session 1
AFK SESSION 1 (approx 08:00 – 20:00)
Since I did not dedicate this weekend entirely to Ludum Dare, I set off to do stuff that I normally do on weekends. First up was to ride motocross which is what I try to do every Saturday with a friend of mine. It takes about 30 minutes to load the bike on the trailer and pack the gear followed by an hour’s drive. It had started to snow and the roads were icy so it took longer than normal. When I drive I tend to be able to focus a lot on thinking about gamedev and it is something about not being able to use a computer that allows the extra mental focus. I spent the hour drive figuring out two game designs to choose from and an endless runner inside a room with a conveyor belt was one of the ideas. Since it was icy I had to start by changing my rear tire to an ice tire and then I rode and hung out until 2 pm before heading back home. More icy roads and then the process of cleaning the bike, and myself for that matter =) In the afternoon I went with my wife and kids to go Christmas shopping, cut my hair, and we ate out. Then the drive back home and tucking the children in for the night.
AFK Session 1
GAME DEV SESSION 2 (approx 19:30 – 23:45)
I got back with working on the game and added some of the game-play elements.
Status after session2
AFK SESSION 2 (approx 00:00 – 13:30)
Feeling really tired I went to bed around midnight. I had only managed to get 8-9 hours of game development in and I had doubts that I would be able to make a complete game to the level I had hoped. I woke up at 9 am. My wife had already been up for some hours so she headed to bed to get some rest and I spent the morning playing with the kids and tidying up the house. After lunch when my wife was back in action I got cracking with the final session.
AFK Session 2
GAME DEV SESSION 3 (approx 13:30-02:59)
At this point I had most of the game yet to do. The game play was very primitive with a few test blocks and no real idea how to progressively build the flow of blocks to make it interesting. I came up with the idea of adding air for the astronaut and running forward and jumping consumes air. I created some more interesting level content in Blender to add some visuals to the game. I made progress by adding the side pistons, the particle field to prevent escaping the room, and some different death mechanics. I was becoming more and more happy with the progress and by 9 pm I had most of the game completed except music, sound effects, build testing, and some final polish.
I began to make the music and I wasn’t too happy with the direction that the music was taking but I had no time to start over so I salvaged what I could when making the menu and game music. The sound effects are primitive vocal effects into my mic that I warped and twisted a bit.
At 2 am the game was pretty much finished. I attempted to compile for PC (which worked fine) but the WebGL build resulted in the astronaut being black / having no texture. I thought it was a lighting issue after I searched the Internet a bit but in the end I noticed that the astronaut texture was 1024×1024 and all the others were 512×512. When reduced the astronaut texture to 512×512 it worked and the game looked fairly close in the browser to the PC version.
I compiled the PC and WebGL versions, packaged the Unity project, and uploaded everything to my web server. I submitted the game to the Ludum Dare site at 02:59.
I was very pleased to have completed the game within the time frame and under the circumstances. Knowing I had to get up before 7am the next day for my day-job I still made an effort to tweet a few tweets and create a gameplay video and uploading it to YouTube. This is my normal master plan for marketing; A YouTube video and a couple of tweets =)
Status after session 3 (game finished)
AFK SESSION 3 (03:30 – onwards)
I slept for three and a half hours and drove off to work… business as usual only more tired than usual.
RESULT
I was happy with the game all things considered. The tactile feel of the game could be better and some more variation of junk, and maybe traps, would have been fun to add.
LESSONS LEARNED
WHAT ABOUT LD38?
Yes – I will attend again. If it will be a dedicated run or another shared weekend like this will yet have to be decided!
This time I thought I'd have no chance. When 10 hours remained I had only managed to get 5 hours of development done since it was my wife's birthday this weekend and a lot of other stuff was going on. Managed to put a massive push for the final 10 hours and got a complete game together. Primitive graphics and game play, but complete with menu systems, game states, highscore, and tuning with 4 sound tracks, and audio. Available for WebGL and Windows download.
Here is my "15h" entry https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/planetary-remains
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7jwR_lRZE4
Hope you've all had a great LD38! I'm looking forward to being able to put more time in for LD39.
This was my third consecutive Ludum Dare and every time around I learn something new. In LD38 there was a high probability of failure for me because I had very little time available. Family commitments and my wife's birthday on the Sunday could (and should?) have been enough reasons to skip the event this time but instead I wanted to see if I could adjust my ambition level to still make a release before the deadline.
When 10 hours remained I had only managed to put 5 hours aside for making the game. I was happy to do the final compile of the game 5 minutes before the deadline which I was really pleased about =)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7jwR_lRZE4
The game has similarities to Missile Command and the goal is to protect the [square] planet from asteroids (0 points for uniqueness at the core idea =) But instead of destroying the asteroids the size of the planet determines how much power you have to deflect inbound asteroids.
* Here's the game page: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/planetary-remains *
Even though it's my simplest and most primitive looking LD game, I personally think it plays better than my other two entries. I managed to get a score of 2730 - can you beat it??
Postmortem, time lapse, and lessons learned will follow.
Hey all. I finally got around to finish my timelapses and I made multiple versions depending on how much patience you have =)
Here is the "gamedev" only version at 100x real time speed: https://youtu.be/EB6rdjzWej8
Here is the "full weekend" version at 1000x real time speed (5 minutes): https://youtu.be/a_ktCF-sQ60
Here is the "full weekend" version at 100x real time speed (21 minutes): https://youtu.be/Pc0YHI3KqMc
I am also uploading a "full weekend" version at 100x real time speed clocking in over 3 hours in duration if you want to see any particular details. That one also features some commentary and real time segments too. I'll post the link once those 13 GB have uploaded to YouTube.
As I've probably mentioned too many times already, I only managed to get 15h of development during this Ludum Dare so I was happy to be able to submit a finished game with menus, highscore, music, sound effects, and somewhat balanced game play.
Please feel free to play and rate (HTML5 version included):
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/planetary-remains
I hope you all had a great Ludum Dare!
After the release of my LD38 entry "Planetary Remains" I've played the game a bit myself and I realized that you can get past a critical spawn rate so the asteroids start blocking themselves. I did put a limit at the spawn rate but I was unable to test it out properly prior to release so I had to hope it was a reasonable rate. Still, I think the limit that does exist prevents total flooding of the screen so it should still be a <10 minute limit of how long you can play (I hope!)
Here is a video of my latest (successful) highscore attempt - I think the spawn rate hits the minimum cap at 3:52 in the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=posAWX45wfU
You can play the game here (HTML5 and Win download): https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/planetary-remains
Today is my youngest daughter's birthday and tonight when the kids go to sleep I'll head to bed at the same time as them and I'll set my alarm so I can get up in time for LD which starts 3 AM Swedish/CET time. This will be my fourth consecutive Ludum Dare and every time around I get more and more eager and excited to participate. There are so many lessons to be learned before, during, and after LD. I wish all of you the best of luck and plenty of fun!
My weapons of choice will be: * Unity 5.5 * Photoshop CS * Blender * Sound Forge * Cubase
This was my fourth consecutive Ludum Dare and I finished my game Robot Power in time to wait in the queue to submit it during submission hour(s). I'll be adding a post mortem and timelapse video - but as I'm recovering today I'll just share a screenshot, youtube video, and link to the game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vitlk5IHSYk
You can play the game (Windows and HTML5/WebGL): https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/robot-power
I made the game in Unity3D 5.5 (source project in the links) and in addition I used Blender, Photoshop CC, Cubase and SoundForge to make the game.
I'll also throw in a quick lesson learned: I tried to sit in the "home office" and dedicate the entire weekend to LD - that failed, the three kids were in and out of the office like chip monks to an acorn stash. To get full dedication I will have to go elsewhere or send my wife and kids on holiday =)
Hope you all had a fun experience and that you learned a lot!
I put together a combined time-lapse and narrated post mortem commentary video from the making of my game "Robot Power":
Time-Lapse and Post Mortem
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSCYn3dQX_4
Game page
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/robot-power
Now I'm back from a family vacation and I'm eager to continue to play some of the LD39 entries (let me know if you want me to test your game =). I will also compile a Mac-version of Robot Power (although I suspect most people play the HTML5 version anyway).
Feel free to give the game a go :) Sneak preview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vitlk5IHSYk Game page: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/robot-power
I also had a request to break out a slower version of the Blender low-poly modeling and character rigging section from my timelapse so I'll try to do that and publish it on YouTube as well. I think I'll continue to combine the timelapse and narrated postmortem. I saw someone doing that a while back and I think that the concept works quite well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSCYn3dQX_4
In my garage I've built a sound recording room which is a super silent padded room where I record sound effects. I have three kids and for LD36,37,38 I sat in my normal room making my games and I also spent much of those Ludum Dares away from the computer with my family and other activities.
For LD39 I wanted to dedicate the full 48 hours to making a game to see what I could come up with. As my wife and kids were home I thought I'd virtually lock myself into the sound room so the night before I moved my computer and essential gear into the room. I got up before 3am (which is when LD starts in Sweden), made a cup of coffee and went out into the room. Initially it worked great - I had a solid 6 hour stretch with 100% focus on making my LD entry.
I went in to the house to have breakfast and the kids were awake. That was the end of my privacy :) They thought it was super exciting to run in and out of the sound room and I couldn't bring myself to actually lock the door so for the remaining 48 hours I got interrupted pretty much the same as for my previous three Ludum Dares.
Lesson learned: Not worth going into the sound room, better send wife and kids on a weekend trip or just be in the house like I did before.
There was one benefit though... I had a good spot to record my sound effects for the game even though I only spent about 30 minutes on those for recording, editing, and implementation. Here I am recording one of the sound effects during LD39, about 2 hours before the deadline.
If you want to give Robot Power a go (not Rocket Power like I write over and over again for some reason) there are HTML5 and Win download versions here:
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/robot-power
I added a Mac OSX build of Robot Power. I'm just learning about OSX and it feels a bit like I'm on a different planet, but hopefully it should work :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vitlk5IHSYk
Robot Power Page https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/robot-power
Fun to see that the results are in and I was thrilled to achieve my first top-10 finish in the graphics category! Audio was not too bad either considering the limited time I put into audio.
A lesson learned, however, is that it was my lowest ever score in the "fun" category which arguably is the most important category. The fun factor (and innovation for that matter) is something I definitely have to try to improve upon in LD40.
LD36 wasn't scored so but in the three most recent events I've placed in the top 40% in all categories for all three events which I'm happy with. The chart is created using 1 - (MYPLACE / COMPOENTRIES) to get the percentage where 100% is the best (#1 in a category).
Thanks everyone for a great event - see you all in December again :)
I'm excited to take part in yet another LD and this time around it will be my fifth. I'm in Sweden so I'll be heading to bed now setting the alarm for 2:30 AM so I can get ready for the start at 3AM.
This time around I will go 2D for the first time (I think) so my primary tools are: * Unity3D (2D) * ProCreate on Ipad Pro (sketching) * Adobe Illustrator with Wacom Tablet (sketch --> vector art) * Photoshop (may not be needed) * Steinberg Cubase + a bunch of VSTi for music * SoundForge
My backup plan is Blender and 3D where I'm more familiar.
Check out my previous 4 LD-games, there are full timelapses from the making of them too https://www.imphenzia.com/ludum-dare
Hey all,
Hope you are all having a great time with LD40! I thought I'd spend a couple of minutes to send out a progress update.
I started with a sketch of the concept: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKSip3Fge84
Maybe not the most original, but I wanted to make a 2D game this time around so I went for it. I sketched out the main characters on my Ipad with ProCreate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eD_T-pPkWJA
I then used Illustrator and a Wacom tablet to make it into vector graphics.
Now I'm in Unity making the game itself and this is what it looks like 12 hours in (I had to use my Mobile phone to record since I'm capturing for my TimeLapse + PostMortem too =)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSn6C1nPSi0
Priority is given to the police eating donuts!
Happy fragging everyone :)
My 5th Ludum Dare is now in the books and this was probably the most fun one to make. I had a game plan quickly and this weekend I could dedicate most of my time to making the game.
For the theme I made a classic 2D platformer and the more coins you collect the worse it is in terms of slowing you down. Your money bag grows as you collect coins and it may prevent you to dodge cops and clear important gaps.
Here's a video of the gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0vPY5k_tIs
Menu screenshot:
...and the game URL: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/robby-coppy
Full Timelapse & Post Mortem will follow.
I guess you could also say "The more [bullets] you have [in you] the worse it is" =) but that's not the actual theme of my game :) Off to bed now, I have to take the kids to school in... less than two hours, huh!
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/robby-coppy
With this being my first 2D game I had to get a somewhat speedy workflow for the art. I ended up sketching in ProCreate on the iPad and then transferring the sketch to Illustrator to make it into vector art. I found sketching to be faster on the iPad than in Illustrator but I have yet a lot to learn. It was a fun process though. I think the sketches took about 15 minutes and then I spent over an hour to make it into vector so there is still much time to be gained in future LDs.
This cop is eating donuts and taking care of business. Use keys AW and SPACE to avoid this happening :)
I'm looking for feedback to improve playability of platform games. Drop a comment and I'll play and rate your game too!
You can play Robby & Coppy here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/robby-coppy (Browser/WebGL and Win versions)
Will be posting a timelapse with postmortem narration tonight too.
It took some time but I've now put together a narrated timelapse where I describe the though process, decisions, tools used, and challenges when making my LD40 2D platformer game "Robby & Coppy".
I also included webcam footage and captures while drawing on the iPad this time. If anyone counts how many times I say "I ended up with" - you get extra credit! =)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXS9gZ671sY
This also acts as somewhat of a postmortem but I may add one in written form too.
Please play and rate here (web browser version available): https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/robby-coppy