I’ve seen this a few times and thought it was neat so now I am going to participate. I’m sticking with something easy the first time around and using other resources.
I will be using RPG Maker VX Ace, Game Character Hub, GIMP, and possibly try my hand at one of the audio tools in the Tools page.
I participated in LD 32 and enjoyed it a lot. So, I decided I’d be ready for the next one but then week after week went by and I got next to no practice in. Luckily I work best under a timeline and have spent the past week or two researching some tools to use for this one and even made a warmup weekend game.
So my tools for this one will likely be:
Gdevelop for the engine
GIMP for pictures and art
Bosca Ceoil & SFXR for sounds and music
Excited to learn some new things this time around so I can expand my experience.
This is my second Ludum Dare entry and I am satisfied with my progress. The first one was with RPG Maker and this one was with GDevelop. I have a decent understanding of some of the basic game logic of game development because of these small competitions. I’ll probably do a better post after the competition is complete.
Here is my finished game’s entry link!
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-33/?action=preview&uid=51253
Next competition I hope to learn Unity or more likely I may use python and pygame.
Going in –
Starting my 2nd ludum dare competition was something I didn’t know if I would do or not. I had spent very little time looking into how to use any tools or if I would be able to make something worth presenting. I made something for the warmup weekend though and it made me more confident in that I knew I could get SOMETHING made that would at least be good experience. I worked on relearning some basic pixel art, audio tools, and Gdevelop. I knew I hadn’t prepared enough for anything with real coding so I went with that. I spent most of my week learning how to use my tools effectively and read up on some tips and tricks. On the night before the release of the theme I took the final 20 submissions and brain stormed ideas for about 3/4ths of them. Luckily for me the one that got chose was one I had a decent idea for. I also knew this time around to try and make a game that is short and simple, because there are thousands of others they still have to play.
Good –
I feel like I learned a lot about the tools I used before hand with the warmup and that gave me the skills I needed to make something simple for LD33. The tool Gdevelop is surprisingly robust for something that requires 0 coding and with it easily exporting to web and being a small file it makes it perfect for a weekend game project. I lucked out with this tool because it was exactly what I needed to counter my early on lack of preparation.
The gameplay turned out better than I could of hoped for because I worked out the major glitches early on and even managed to find a quirky physics system in Gdevelop that adds that extra humor value. I know I love games with ridiculous physics and when I was tossing knights around and making them bounce off each other I knew I had to leave it in. Based on the comments I’ve gotten it has been a crowd pleaser.
The art and music turned out pretty well too despite what I thought. I am horrible with music so I tried to keep it a simple beat and I think I succeeded in making it tolerable. The art is simple but I think I followed the basic rules of pixel art well enough that it doesn’t look terrible. I’ve seen some other games so far that blow me away with how they got such a good look in 48-72 hours though.
Bad –
I had intended for this game to be pretty different than how it turned out and some limitations of the tools I used and my own lack of experience were the downfall of me. I feel like I made a decent game for the competition but it could of been much better had I prepared.
I decided that ceiling traps were a bit too much like LD32 with it being an unconventional weapon, also it would of taken a lot of time from refining what I did have ready.
The ideas I had were great but unfortunately I was unable to do more than a basic attack. I had the assets and code for the throwing axe but it made the knights go a little buggy so I scrapped it because I knew it would be a headache to debug it in just 6 hours.
I had a cool idea for an easter egg where if you continue to play and die over and over the sprite degrades until you are a token and it gives you a game over with no replay. I decided to scrap that because wow would that of been awful to do with 1 day left. I did make the last one though where there are two different death screens.
Next time –
I really want to learn enough of Unity to make something with it for LD34. I am working on learning C# and I think it should be easy enough with my previous scripting/programming experience. One of the other things I would love to work on is my pixel art, because I feel gameplay, art, and sound are the key aspects of any game.
This time I went for the compo because I knew I could finish in the time limit and to be honest I still had hours to spare and just submitted early. Next time I might try to find some people to work with and do the Jam instead because teams seem to produce the best quality overall.
Overall I enjoyed LD33 and playing the games others have made, if you haven’t seen mine yet please give it a try, it’s quick and worth a few minutes of your time c:
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-33/?action=preview&uid=51253
First off, I want to thank everyone that has played and rated my game. This was my second ludum dare and I feel like I did much better this time and some of the comments make me feel that I didn’t waste my time on it. I look forward to the next one and even have some plans for MiniLD 62, which may include a return of Turrios but that all depends on if I can learn what I need to before then.
If you haven’t checked out my game yet, please do as it is short and worth a quick laugh.
I told myself I would try to be prepared for the next one with Unity but I don’t think I’m quite there yet.
Going to try and use either Gdevelop again or maybe GameMaker.
LMMS for audio, or bfxr
GIMP for graphics
LD34 – Stardust
I was not very fond of the two themes that made their way to the top of the list. After an hour of brainstorming different game ideas I found it actually wasn’t that bad. I ended up with three ideas that I chose between. The first being an endless runner that involved dodging food as it makes you slower, until you can not run. The second idea was also an endless runner but involved some action with a jump and an attack, very unoriginal. The third idea is the one that I went with.
Game Idea:
I ended up going with a space object, or at that time a comet, that would fly through space collecting smaller objects until it became a star. Overall the gameplay was unoriginal but the slight variant and my love of space made be go with it. Instead of rushing into the barebones of the game I decided to do some research after I decided what kind of game I was going to make. I read up on various space objects and their respective sizes to get an idea of various stages the little comet can go through.
There were a few additional ideas that I came up with but they didn’t make it into the game. I didn’t get to add any other objects or special upgrades or even easter eggs. I spent a lot of time in Monodevelop trying to figure out how to fix my code or do simple things. I had played around with Unity before but I had never actually made anything outside of a tutorial before. I have programming experience in other languages though and some game logic experience from the past two ludum dares that I participated in that helped me get the game done in time.
The fact that I was able to finish the game, and have it up and playable amazed me considering this was my first time with Unity in terms of real development. I feel like with some more practice I will be in better shape for Ludum Dare 35. I also want to work on my audio and pixel art skills. Here’s to next time!
My schedule has finally cleared up a bit and with that comes time to work on improving my game. I know the major complaint I received was that people did not know where they were or where they were going because there was no reference points. I decided to add an arrow to indicate direction and some coordinates to track position. I also plan to give you an indicator of how big you are!
To other developers, how much do you improve before releasing the improved version or next revision? I have an entire list of things I want to improve and I imagine I’ll do it in phases but I’d like the opinion of some of the more seasoned developers.
Happy Holidays and Pleasant Gaming!
P.S. I plan to release update 1 later tonight.
I managed to finish off a few well needed post-jam improvements to my game. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep up the pace and make some features that I knew I wouldn’t be able to do in the Jam.
Enjoy!
I made quite a few improvements to Stardust in update v1.3 The short summary is parallax background, trail, changing player icon, and some other minor fixes and adjustments.
I uploaded the v1.3 post-jam to itch.io for web and the other builds are located in a link on my game’s ludum dare page!
I made a lot of improvements to my entry for post-jam updates and am relatively happy with how it turned out for being my first Unity game that I made from scratch. I started out on the Friday of the theme announcement with next to no experience in Unity and spent 90% of my development scratching my head and researching how to get my ideas into code form.
A few improvements I never got around to are improving the audio and sound effects, made a new song but it was just slightly better. The next one that got skipped was fixing the zero G collision that causes the player to spin out. The main complaints on my game were the controls and the lack of direction, and I fixed one of them.
I hope to make something impressive in LD35, but for now here is the final version of Stardust.
Feel free to leave a comment here or on my game page and I’ll try to play your game before the time is up.
Plan to participate in LD35
Tools:
Unity 5 w/ C#
GIMP
LMMS for audio probably.
Been practicing in unity between the last LD and now. I’m still relatively new to it and game design as a whole (so many genres). The last three LDs I have participated solo. I would be open to working with others this time around since I have a small bit of experience under my belt now. My programming and design skills are intermediate in some areas and amateur in others. I can do simplistic art and sound and would call those two areas my weak points, specifically sound.
LD Portfolio:
I spent some time prior to this week working on this but the majority of the work was done this weekend. I am happy with how it turned out and am glad I continued with the project because I learned a lot of different things, such as how picky the UI scaling can be.
In my warmup game GitTheKraken I had one main issue with the project and that was Unity’s UI scaling. Before the main LD I wanted to put out a question for the community since a lot of people here use Unity.
How do you manage scaling for multiple resolutions, and how effective has it been?
I’ve tried to use the anchor points and adjusting where it bases the anchor from in relation to the screen, however it seems to always mess up on 1080p or lower than 1024×768. I managed to get the placement so it would fit everything in but it’s not truly in the locations I wanted it to. I’m interested to see what others have come up with as rebuilding 50 times is not fun.
I have done a LOT of game dev work these past few weeks. Starting with finishing an old project, mini-ld66, gitkraken contest/ld-warmup, and further updates to projects. I feel it is so helpful to warm up before the actual LD because it gets your creative muscles ready for the event.
I just finished and released V1.1 for web of my GitTheKraken endless runner. I added two powerups and made some fixes / changes that were some things negatively critiqued on. Tomorrow I plan to add even more stuff to it. (I plan to update the source code link on the page in the morning, so tired haha)
What would you like to see added?
Fylgjur’s character animations thus far. First time doing some animation work so it’s pretty tough on time but I should still make it.
I am quite happy with how this turned out. I didn’t expect to get as far I wanted to with it but I also had/have tons of plans on what I can do to make it better.
Give it a try, vote and leave a comment. I always try to rate those in the comments!
Were-slime-wizard demands you test your fate in Fylgjur
Every Ludum dare I typically pick some new game genre to make and I’m slowly working my way in to genres I like to play myself. I would say that Fylgjur turned out to be the best one I’ve made so far, even if the votes don’t say so in the end. I learned a lot from the project and will be doing some more updates to it soon. Anyways here is how the compo went for me.
Time Breakdown
0-1 Thinking of an idea and then planning it out
1-2 Making sprites and getting the base project setup
2-3 Getting basic player movement finished with a static sprite
3-9 Sleeping
9-15 Making animations, tweaking health code
15-19 Made weapon animations and code + first enemy
19-20 Fixing movement & attack bugs
20-24 More weapon code & animations, mostly spear and scrapping bow
24-28 Adding score and spawning of enemies
28-34 Sleeping
34-40 Making enemy bird fly in a pattern and not just straight to player, made sound effects
40-44 Tutorial level, music, UI
44-47 Added skeleton enemy with animation and code
47-48 Playtest, build, fix, rebuild, fix, rebuild, fix, rebuild, fix, rebuild
I think I managed my team pretty well and I only had to cut small sections off of what I had planned. I didn’t waste a lot of time on assets that did not get used but there were a few. I have a shield with blocking made but no reason to block since it was designed to stop arrows, but bows never got added. I had a few ideas to make damage popups and fruit hanging in the trees that you can hit to collect as health, but no time. I ran into a few bugs that nearly made me pull my hair out because they made no sense but they were resolved thankfully. The timeline is probably 80% accurate but it’s all a blur at this point.
Updates to game will be in next post!