Well people, since everyone is introducing themselves, I might as well do the same.

I’m Bob, and I will be participating on the very Ludum Dare 29 as my very first “solo” event. I started with game development about a year and a half ago, and even though I feel completely unprepared I thought that this might be the best chance to prove myself and to shake this feeling once and for all.

I am no artist, I am no coder, so by checking me out you will probably see me scrimming around tools and figuring out how to put the pieces of the puzzle together, and drowning in a spiral of angst and caffeine.

For those of you who are interested in my antics, you can follow the whole thing (except part of Saturday afternoon – Europe Time) on my Twitch Channel, and Tweeting jokes and desperation on my twitter account (@Bobmorate). I can guarantee that at least one cat will appear on the stream at some point. Probably when they decide to lie down on my keyboard.

To all of those participating, good luck and have a ton of fun!!

I have a confession to make.

Ever since LD29, where I did manage to make a submission (although it was far from perfect), I haven’t been practicing much on my skills.  Last time I was terrified of the experience, and the possible outcome. But I’m not afraid. Not this time. What I learned on my last experience is that there is no better teacher than having a tight time limit, and a big community who supports each other.

This time, I am prepared. I have been reading GameMaker studio books left and right, trying to get the best of it. Learning new tricks, and improving some old ones. I’ve even been doing some Pixel art whenever I had the chance, so hopefully this submission should be a lot better than my last one, “Raiders of the depths”. This time, I’ll be making regular updates on my progress, and streaming the whole thing on Twitch like last time. There will be times where I don’t seem to be progressing, and that’s because I stumped into something I don’t know how to do yet (but that’s part of the fun!)

Having LD30 approach fast, I’d like to take advantage of the situation to give one or two tips from my personal experience to anyone who is on the fence of participating:

1. You are your own worst enemy.
   I get it, you are a creative mind, and want to implement a lot of cool features and art to the game you want to make, but always, always keep an eye on the time limit. You only have 48 hours, so plan ahead, leave buffer times, and make them count!
2. Twitch is the best procrastination remedy.
   Streaming your Ludum Dare progress is a surprisingly effective way to avoid procrastinating. Maybe it’s not your case, but I know of a few people who will support me on this, that having someone watch you work is the best incentive of getting progress done. Imagine that your boss was looking over you the whole time. Imagine that your boss are actually 40 people. I encourage you to try it out.
3. It’s OK to be stumped.
   It happens a lot. You design a feature, you try to put in your code, but it doesn’t work as you initially expected. This is okay. This will happen. Don’t panic! Take your time. Ask for help. Look into forums. Read some tutorials (you won’t believe the massive amount of tutorials youtube has for anything!) and you will eventually figure it out.
4. It is also OK to sleep.
   You might have a 48-hour limit, but if you spend 48 hours developing non-stop, you will find that you lose concentration easily, find hard to follow your own pace, and end up wasting more time than you actually would have “wasted” by sleeping. If you feel tired, go sleep!
5. Make a game that it’s for you to create in 48 hours, and for the player to finish in less than 15 (exceptions may occur).
   This goes without saying, but you are making a game for other people to play. I’m not going to give you any game design tips. If you managed to make it to this point you probably don’t need them from someone like me anyway. I will limit myself to remind you that the games have to be played by people who will be evaluating it. Having an incomplete, or impossible-to-beat game (unless you’re doing an endless game, of course), will leave an even worse impression! And speaking of this…
6. Do not fear the reviews.
   People who review your game know what you have been through. People here are not professional critics, or reviewers. They are developers, just like you. Do not fear critics. Use them to learn something new.
7. Most importantly: Have fun!
   Of course, this would all be pointless if we didn’t love what we do. So make sure that you have fun with the process! Get the taste of some other people’s work, make some friends, learn, and enjoy Ludum Dare!

Living in Europe I always start the LD a few hours after the rest. Given that due to timezones, the challenge starts at 3 AM here, I usually start it up and figure the topic the following morning.

This actually forces me to keep it as simple as I can.

For this LD in particular, to follow the given topic “Connected Worlds”, I have decided to make a 2D Puzzle platformer game where the player controls both characters at the same time while dodging obstacles and enemies.

Tools used:

• GameMaker: Studio
• GraphicsGale
• Audacity
• Office (for design purposes)

Progression so far (2 hours in):

I made some placeholder graphics (stickmen) for the characters and the obstacles, and so, I started into the coding of the objects and the behavior of them upon player interaction. Very basic functionality, and all buggy, but satisfied with the current progress so far.

I made a test stage to try out the platforming mechanics, which you can see right here. I know it’s not very impressive right now, but I’ll try to make it prettier along the day.

On the To-do list for the following hours:

• Polish movement mechanics.
• Define win/lose conditions.
• Attempt multiple level flow.
• Creating additional obstacles.

You can follow the whole process live (where I try to figure out things on-the-go) on my Twitch Channel.

Having the time of my life!

About 10 hours in, here’s the checklist of things that I have accomplished on this time:

• Created player controls and placeholder sprites.
• Created behavior for obstacles (walls)
• Defined win and lose conditions
• Created pits, spikes, and other traps.
• Basic physics.
• First drapft of the player Graphic: