I don’t think I’ll be entering the compo this time around, I just don’t have any ideas for the theme.

But, I’d be willing to participate and write some music for a Jam team that needs it.  Reply here if you’d like a musician on your team.  I’d prefer a team that has entered the Jam before (and maybe just used stock music previously).

Hey, would I be able to write music for multiple Jam entries, or is that frowned upon?  Does anyone know?

If so, maybe this time around I’ll just write lots o’ music for people.

Or, maybe I could make some assets for anyone to use?

I’ve uploaded Furni-Chore, my entry for LD37:

Arrange furniture in the room, following all the rules for each piece of furniture.  There are 15 levels in all!

THINGS THAT I LIKED:

• I managed to get all of the furniture placement rules to work properly, along with showing the player all the valid placement points.  It even removes invalid furniture whenever you pick up something that it requires.  While making this, I was so worried that I wouldn’t get it all to come out right, but it did in the end.
• This is probably some of the most mellow music I’ve written, and I really enjoyed listening to it while playing the game.  I hope others do as well.
• I made all of the sound effects myself through the microphone plus some sound editing, which I’ve done in the past.  I think I will continue to do this, since I’m starting to get pretty good at it.
• I made a level editor to help speed the process.  Without it, it would have taken me much longer to make all the levels, and I wouldn’t have had time to make the 15 that I had.

THINGS THAT I DIDN’T LIKE:

• The aforementioned level editor is very rudimentary, and always saves to the same filename (which has to be manually changed in order to be inserted into the game).  If I had more time, I would have made it more user-friendly and included it as part of the actual game.  I think including a level editor would have helped push the game up to the top.
• It’s in the code to allow furniture that is pre-placed and can’t be moved, which could allow for interesting puzzles.  I didn’t have time to actually make any puzzles using the mechanic though; I was lucky enough to get the current 15 levels done in time for the compo to end.
• I keep feeling like I made level 14 too hard.  People have beaten it though, so maybe I’m just being paranoid.
• The way to tell the attributes of furniture is to hover over it or check on the slight color tint.  I think having actual different graphics would probably be preferable, but I didn’t have time for that.  It worked out, but it does add to the confusion.
• I really wanted the sofas and chairs to auto-rotate to face properly, but I just didn’t have the time to implement it.
• I also had a TV planned that had to be against a wall facing a sofa, but I cut it out after I realized that checking facing was going to be very difficult to accomplish with the way I had everything set up.

THINGS FOR THE FUTURE?:

• This could make for a good completed game, maybe for mobile devices.  It just needs a facelift and a slew of additional puzzles and furniture types, and also some more furniture attributes.  I would definitely want to have the aforementioned TV put in.
• Someone suggested to me that it might be possible to have levels procedurally generated.  I agree that it’s possible, and I might look into it if I decide to take this anywhere.
• If I continue with this, finishing up the level editor is a must.  I’d really like people to be able to make their own puzzles and share them.

There’s still time left to play/rate my compo entry, Furni-Chore.  It’s a fun, easy-to-learn puzzle game with mellow music and 15 levels.  Try it out!

I've finished my Ludum Dare 38 entry, "Nucleu". Still trying to figure out how to publish it on the new site though. There's no publish button that I can find...

My entry, Nucleu: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/nucleu

I actually finished it in just 2 minutes shy of 24 hours, a personal best for me! It's not a long game but I hope people still find it interesting. Enjoy the procedural soundtrack as well!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/nucleu

Created in 24 hours!

Quick analysis of my entry, Nucleu: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/nucleu

The Good:

• I finally managed to complete a game in under 24 hours! I just missed it the last time I tried to do it, but this time I made it in 23 hours 58 minutes, with just 2 minutes left.
• The procedural music came out good, and the quick script I wrote to handle all of the tracks worked as intended. There are still little things I'd probably tweak, but that'd just be fussing with it really.
• I think I nailed the particle effects. The electrons sparkle just enough to get your attention, the nebulous background does a gradual change in color, and the effect on the end screen also felt convincing. The electron trails also came out perfect. Any success with graphics is a victory in my book, since I find it's usually my weakest area.
• As an artistic piece, it flowed very well; it definitely came out as the most artsy of my LD entries.

The Bad:

• That bug I missed initially that made the game unbeatable in some cases. I started noticing people couldn't figure out if there was an ending, and then upon replaying I was able to spot an easy-to-trigger bug (it doesn't trigger if you do everything flawlessly, which I was doing in testing without realizing it). It was literally just a 2 where I should have put a 1; easy to fix, but I wish I had caught it sooner.
• The controls seemed to be slightly confusing, and by that I mean it was easy for people to forget that you can right click as well. There are three ways I could have fixed this. First method, I could have made it so that the player automatically moves towards the mouse, and left clicking fires the electrons instead. Second method, I could have added some kind of visual effect when you right click without electrons, just to let the player know that it's supposed to do something that you can't do yet (which would prompt them to try it later). Third method, I could have had the electrons transfer just by touching the other atoms, instead of firing them (this actually makes more sense chemically, I would think).
• To reduce confusion, I should have had the small atoms disappear when you moved on to stage 3 of the game (since they were no longer necessary for the win condition). If there was time, I was also going to add a third atom size that required 4 electrons (it was in the atom scripting already to support this), but didn't end up adding it.
• The atoms themselves probably deserved to look a little better than just a circle. At least a little shading might have helped.

I noticed people doing this and thought I'd do the same, because I have all these musicians with instruments that need to fit onto a little cart with wheels...

This is for my entry, "Nucleu", of course: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/nucleu

The results for my entry, Nucleu, found here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/nucleu/

• Overall: 110 (3.739 average in 25 ratings)
• Fun: 283 (3.13 average in 25 ratings)
• Innovation: 244 (3.217 average in 25 ratings)
• Theme: 16 (4.304 average in 25 ratings)
• Graphics: 145 (3.783 average in 25 ratings)
• Audio: 8 (4.348 average in 25 ratings)
• Mood: 2 (4.455 average in 24 ratings)

Once again, Mood is my top category; I got second place! I was also very pleased with my scores for Audio and Theme; those categories in addition to Mood were my focus for the entry. Thank you to everyone who voted, and I'm glad you enjoyed it!

I didn't think I would be able to participate this time, but I managed to squeeze out my entry with about a half hour remaining: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/i-need-a-charger

I Need A Charger!

Try to find the cellphone store in the city to buy a charger, then find an outlet to plug in, before your battery runs out!

Post-mortem for my LD39 entry, I Need A Charger! (There's still time to play it!)

Things that went well

• Music, as always. This is the first time I've used Reaper as my music writing tool (my old software stopped working after a hard drive crash), and I was pleased with the results. It was a good test of its abilities.
• The random map generator works well, even if it isn't balanced. I was happy enough that I got it working in time, but I also have code in place that allows it to be used with different sized maps, allowing for larger cities and such.
• All the random shop names, and each one has a unique purchasable item (if you have to buy something to use their wifi). It's all text, but I feel like it really added something to the gameplay to make it more fun.
• The phone interface worked great, and I have enough knowledge about how camera layers work in Unity that I was able to get mini maps and such working accurately and displaying different things.

Things that didn't go well

• Graphics are always a weak point for me. Although I felt I did okay with making the phone interface look suitably authentic, the game graphics themselves are pretty bad. The buildings don't even look like buildings.
• The gameplay is a little confusing, so it should have had some kind of tutorial, but there was no way I could do it with the time I had left at the end.
• The game can feel boring in spots when you're looking around for the shops. There were probably a lot of ways I could have made things more interesting, but I just didn't have time to implement things. I should have at least made the player move faster (and the battery drain quicker in exchange).

Things to change if I were to make a post-compo version

• As stated above, faster player and slightly faster battery drain to compensate.
• Allow the player to select different map sizes, with a smaller map used for a tutorial.
• I wanted people wandering the streets and traffic to avoid. Maybe with such obstacles, I wouldn't even need to increase the battery drain.
• I wanted to have a feature where you could do things on the phone to reduce battery usage, such as dim the screen or turn off data connections. Then the game would function as an instructional tool as well.
• More usefulness to the GPS. Right now, all it does is show your position, but it'd be nice if it also kept track of the path you took through the city, or marked important locations you've visited.
• Having one outlet always at your starting position, so that you can always default back to it if you can't find another one... so long as you remember where you started (or the GPS is updated as per the previous change).

Just barely managed to get our Jam entry submitted, "Final Stand"

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/$67606

Final Stand still needs about 6 more votes. Please help!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/final-stand

Anyone else notice that the final theme voting reads like a poem?

You are the weapon, A light in the dark... Keep growing.

3 rules: Shelter, Unusual magic, Color changes everything.

At the beginning there is nothing.

Combine 2 incompatible genres... You really shouldn't mix those.

Floating islands. It spreads; The environment changes you.

Fragile. You are what you eat: Self-replication.

I'll be in unless something major prevents me from it. I'll be 6 hours late to it though since I'm working at the time it starts.

I'll be primarily using Unity (for programming) and Reaper (for music).

I was able to finish my entry, "Text-Gen Platformer". I'll link it shortly once I can publish. In the meantime, here's a screenshot:

EDIT Oh, I can already publish, nevermind!

My entry, Text-Gen Platformer, is complete! Combining a platforming game and a text adventure was tricky, but I managed 3 levels out of it. Enjoy!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/text-gen-platformer

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/text-gen-platformer

The Good

• My first time writing a text parser. It's not very complex, but it works, and I was happy with that.
• I got platforming to work, and rather quickly as well. It was a struggle the first time I did it in LD, but it turned out to be the easy part this time.
• Music, as always.
• Recorded and edited the sound effects, I'm getting better at that. I'm glad I took the time to add in all the typing sound effects, it feels like it adds a lot.
• Parallax background, not difficult but I'm still happy when I manage to pull it off.

The Bad

• Some of the commands were not very intuitive. The fact that you always have to type LEFT or RIGHT after a command like WALK threw some people, and the more I think about it, the more I realize I should probably have simplified it, or at least allowed people to follow the WALK and RUN commands with LEFT or RIGHT by itself. I also could have included FORWARD. Most of this was oversight, but even if I had realized it, I might not have had time to fix it before the deadline.
• I still have no idea what causes the player to fall through platforms sometimes. It's completely random, and the same platforms work normally when the level is reloaded. It makes no sense, so I'm just chalking it up to a Unity physics bug.
• I should have been more forgiving with some of the jumps in the game. The first big jump needed a platform underneath to catch you if you messed it up, so that you could try again easily. The double jump at the end of level 2 belonged more at the end of level 3 instead, and should have had a longer lead up to it for more running time.
• The graphics, while they do their part, could always use improvement. It's still my weakest area.

Improvements

• The above-mentioned improvements to the text parser would help out a lot. In addition, a lot of feedback I got said that it would have been nice to press the up arrow to re-enter previous commands, and I agree with that.
• I really wanted the music to be dynamic, changing depending on what the player was doing at the time, but I just didn't have the time to do it.
• More levels would have been nice, but again, time limit. I also really wanted there to be a boss fight.