Finally submitted my first entry! As I didn’t have much time and since I’m pretty new to Unity, I needed to scope my idea down to the simplest level and this is what I made. Although it’s not much, at least I was able to finish something!

I want to study and analyze the source codes of 2D games hoping to get some learnings (coding techniques, patterns, algorithms, etc.) out of it. I wanted to take a look at games that do not use engines, but use frameworks or just plain code from scratch. But when I browsed entries I mostly saw games made in Unity, GameMaker, etc., it’s hard to find games that don’t use engines and is in 2D. If I could search for games by “their framework used”, that would be very useful. Right now, what I do is click on link to the game’s page then download the source and see if it is not made in a game engine. EDIT: I’m specifically looking for games coded in Java.

I enjoyed making my 2nd entry to LD and I hope you enjoy it when you play it! I'm short of ratings, please play my game!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/strategic-survival

I am logged in but it says "Sign in to post a comment"? It was working fine yesterday.

Here's a short clip that I recorded during my game.

Be prepared for the last wave! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/prototype-towers

https://youtu.be/bOlNxcleXpI

I'm proud of what I made this Ludum Dare 46. I didn't really care about my placings but I am surprised that my Innovation place to be higher than my placing on other categories. I enjoyed playing my game when I was testing it and I'm glad other people also enjoyed it. To be honest this is a game idea of mine for a long time already except for the timed destruction of the towers that was inspired by the theme. The key input mechanic was inspired by one of my favorite games in the PS1: Trap Gunner.

I'm happy that I was able to implement the things I wanted to implement because as the deadline was nearing I was losing motivation but I told myself to just do it because I know it will be worth it in the end. I managed to stay on track and prioritize the things needed for a playable game.

I am currently working on a post jam version with the feedbacks taken into account and I am losing some motivation again :D but I will make sure to finish it even if I'm working on it slowly and bit by bit. After that, I wanna move on and join some jams in itch.io :)

Now, I want to document some of my experiences for my future self to read. You can go ahead and skip this.

What went wrong

When I was testing, I came across a bug that the tower never gets fixed but never gets destroyed either. My implementation for the tower fixing was that after the player successfully inputs the combination, there will be a short delay before the tower is restarted. Initially the delay was 1 second so I tried changing it to .2 and I thought I got rid of the bug but later on I came across the same problem. Upon further debugging and researching I found out that any Coroutine that was started will stop working if the object running it is deactivated.

As a way to show (when overheated) or hide the fix inputs when the tower is selected or unselected I was deactivating the object that contained the fix inputs. To fix it, I added a bool so that the object isn't deactivated when the tower is about to be restarted.

Another "problem" I came across is related to object pooling. The tower keeps on firing at the same enemy even if it already died (and reused again for another enemy) and is out of range. I spent a day or so debugging it. I even guessed that it might be because the enemy died in the same frame and the tower hasn't changed target. The next day I decided to look for help in the Unity forums. It was a long post. When I was about to click the submit button, I thought suddenly came to mind: "Have you set your currentTarget variable to null before acquiring another target?". So I did that and my problem was fixed! WHAT!

What went right

I had a lot of motivation right at the start and I focused on the core mechanic which is the key sequence inputs for the tower. It felt like I knew what to do and how to do it so I didn't really have problems with it.

I was quite satisfied with the organization of my code such as separation of concerns, singletone managers and all that.

Aaaaaand here's the long overdue post jam version of my game! https://marbles88.itch.io/prototype-towers

I lost motivation but the most important thing is I never left it in an unfinished state. I originally planned to have an endless mode but 1) it would push back the "deadline" and 2) while testing, I realized that it's gonna be tiring and stressful since you will keep on fixing your towers. Nevertheless, I still enjoy the key inputs aspect of the game.

This version has the feedback taken into account and there are 3 difficulties. There are 5 levels and I added 2 more types of enemies. I also changed the color palette.

I'm gonna move on and make a different game since my focus is on learning.

I was browsing /r/godot and found a post mentioning Ludum Dare. Found out it's already coming this weekend. I thought the jam will be on mid or end of October. Almost missed it, thank God I was reminded!

I haven't even thought of an idea.

I'll be working with a maze

PS: The dialogs shown are not in the game

But I had to cut out some interesting parts. I know I won't make it given the time, energy, and "health" (my work area is not very ergonomic) I have left. I needed some animations in the boss battle and a few other mechanics but since I cut it out, the battle became less interesting. Nevertheless, I learned so much in this jam!

Here's my game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/$216694

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/cursed-labyrinth

I'm a little exhausted from a small game I'm developing but I'm gonna take a "break" and participate in this twice-a-year event. Can't miss it! I'll try to do something very simple and minimalistic so as to avoid exhausting myself even more.

Tools:

Godot

Paint.NET

I'm happy with the result as I was able to brush up my polishing skills. I am more efficient this time as well because I stopped overthinking about code design which perhaps slowed me down in my previous jams.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/tesla-coil

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/tesla-coil

*Post-jam (Web) - Increased player's damage