I’m looking to join a Jam group for music / game design. (Note: I’d prefer a group that did at least somewhat decent in recent LDs.)

Here’s some examples of my music from previous LD games: https://parsecproductions.bandcamp.com/album/dare

I’m still looking to join a Jam group for music / game design. (Please note: I’d prefer a group that did at least somewhat decent in a recent LD.)

Here’s some examples of my music from previous LD games: https://parsecproductions.bandcamp.com/album/dare

One other thing to note is that the earlier LD start time means that I'm going to be missing the first 9 hours of the competition, since I'll be at work (I'm basically free for the rest of it though).

I couldn't find a Jam group to join, so I'm just going to enter Compo again.

Tools:

-- Unity (programming)

-- Reaper (music)

-- Adobe Animate (graphics)

-- GoldWave (sound)

I'm going to be starting around 9 hours late though, due to the new start time taking it right to the start of my job.

Congrats on everyone’s progress up to now. I myself started my work shift a half hour before the new start time, so I will be almost 9 hours late to start. Hopefully I can get out on time a half hour from now...

I was thinking about trying to implement Vive support in my LD entry. The problem is, I need to install the SteamVR assets from the asset store to do this. Would this be a violation of the compo rules? If so, I'll skip it.

I've completed "Defragment VR", my first fully VR entry to Ludum Dare! I realize this is going to make it difficult to reach that sweet spot of 20 reviews, but we'll see how it goes. If you have VR, please give it a try! (It has only been tested on the HTC Vive, but may work on other systems as well.)

Here's the theme song for my LD entry, "Defragment VR". I used Reaper and Vocaloid 4 (barely used the latter; the lyrics go "Defragment / Defragment / Defragment / Ohhhhhhh").

My game requires VR, so I feel like it's going to be super tricky to get the 20 votes I need. If you have VR, please play and rate my game, and leave a comment so I can rate yours!

Defragment VR

If you have a VR system, please try out my entry, "Defragment VR". It's going to be a rough climb to those 20 votes, but I've got 3 already so far, so I'm hopeful!

My VR-only entry, "Defragment VR", has 16 votes already, and just needs 4 more to be able to get a rating in the compo. Anyone else with a VR system, I would greatly appreciate your feedback and rating!

I've got 18 votes for "Defragment VR", my VR-only entry to LD. Since it requires VR to play, I'm pushing for anyone that has a VR system to try it. I only need 2 more to get a rating, but I'd like as many as I can manage. Big thanks to everyone who's played and rated it so far; I'll be sure to play and rate the games of everyone who played and commented!

My VR-only entry, "Defragment VR", managed to get 24 votes, so it will get a final rating! Thanks to everyone with a VR system that took the time to play it, I really appreciate it! And if anyone else has VR and wants to try it out, there's still plenty of time to do so! ;)

Time to go over things that went good and bad in my VR-only entry, "Defragment VR". (There's still time to play, if you have VR!)

What Went Good

• My first VR entry! (Not counting LD 28, which had Oculus support that no longer works with current systems.) I had less problems with it than I expected, and was able to fairly seamlessly integrate all the VR elements I needed. I didn't know how to bind the player to a specific area, so it was still possible to walk through walls, but there was no advantage it would give you in the gameplay so I didn't mind. The fact that I got it working in the first place was a huge victory to me.
• Music, as usual. A mixture of Atari 2600 sounds and a little electric guitar. Vocaloid is still new to me so it very minimally uses it, but I think it was a nice touch; hopefully I'll be able to use it more in later entries.
• Voice-over tutorial! Usually coming up with a tutorial or instructions screen takes too much time and effort alongside the rest of game development, so I decided to try this to make the process quicker, and I feel like it worked just fine. Also, hooray for robot vocal effects!
• I'm starting to get much better with Unity's particle effects finally. Being able to make a good particle effect goes a long way in disguising the fact that I'm typically terrible with graphics otherwise.

What Went Bad

• The gameplay wasn't quite where I wanted it to be. Originally there were 7 different colors of cubes, and you could only tell the colors by picking them up. That felt chaotic and weird, and it became more worth it to stack the cubes without bothering to merge ones of the same color. When I reduced it to 3 and made the colors visible without holding the cubes, the opposite happened, making it only really worthwhile to merge them and not stack them separately. There's a middle ground somewhere, but I missed it.
• The particle field that ends the game is not very visible, and (as people have pointed out) it's practically at eye level making it even harder to work with. This was because I prioritized the amount of work space you have over the aesthetics of it. If I had set it higher, it would've been an extremely long game without the pressure it was supposed to have, and if it I had set it lower, there would be no room to actually play it. What I probably needed was a different endgame mechanic.
• I originally wanted dynamic audio, but was too focused on getting everything in VR to work right, so I didn't have time for it. Having the music change depending on what color cubes you were holding seems like it would have been a good idea.
• There was an ongoing collision issue with the cubes that I couldn't fully solve by the end of it. If you were holding one cube and it was touching another cube when you picked it up, it would consider the cubes to already be touching, and wouldn't trigger the merge effect. This lead to some frustrating moments for players where you can't seem to merge cubes together, or they would try to push through each other and launch instead. I'm pretty sure I know what caused the problem, but just didn't have time to fix it.
• I really, REALLY wanted to make it possible to play the game without VR, but there just wasn't time to look into it. Besides, I don't think the mechanics would have been possible to do in a FPS setting. Maybe it's best I didn't try.

Gah, how could I have forgotten about LD? I probably won't have time to make something now, especially considering I have to work this weekend.

But... sigh Sacrifices must be made, I guess. I'll do what I can...

I've decided to cancel my entry for LD43, so I'm available if anyone wants me to write some music for their Jam groups. Here are some samples from my previous LD entries:

https://parsecproductions.bandcamp.com/album/dare

Can you be part of multiple Jam groups? I looked through the rules and couldn't figure out if this is allowed or not. If anyone knows the answer to this, let me know. Thanks!

For those that don't know, I put an album out on Bandcamp a while back with music from all my LD entries, and I add new tracks whenever another LD is finished. Please check it out:

https://parsecproductions.bandcamp.com/album/dare

• Musicians
• Unusual Magic System
• Redo Your First Attempt (ex. first date, first LD entry, etc.)

Hey, one of my suggestions ("Unusual magic system") made it past the theme slaughter; that's a first for me!

Tifu and I finished our Jam entry, "Cat Outta Hell". Try to escape hell with 9 lives, or you can spend them for upgrades!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/cat-outta-hell