Well, after years of thinking about it, I'm actually entering Ludum Dare! I'm excited to finally participate and hopeful that I can at least make something playable! I'm using Unity for code and Gimp for art if I draw anything. I'm also using a program I wrote myself that I just call Timesheet - you use it to time activities and it adds up how long you spend altogether, then stores each activity and time to a text file so you can group related activities together and save them. That means I'll be able to know exactly how long I spend on this game out of the 72 hours. Anyway, I'm thrilled to be here and can't wait to get started on my Jam entry!

After brainstorming, I've got two ideas:

-Your HP and money are combined into one value because you're a very greedy person and were cursed. To get rid of the curse, you have to pay back everything you earned from your greedy unethical practices. You can spend your money/health to buy better equipment and earn it back by defeating monsters and selling monster drop items. You can also add to your debt by dying or by using it as emergency healing. This would require a large inventory and a shop system.

-You are fighting as a gladiator because of your debt. Any medical fees are subtracted from your earnings, meaning that the more health you have when you finish the fight the more your debt gets paid. You can also add a bit to your debt to buy better equipment. This would require a pretty robust combat system, and equipment.

I'm probably going to go with idea 2 for now, although I'd like to revisit idea 1. Originally I was going to go with the first idea, but it's finals next week for me and I'm kind of burned out after a long semester. I've done inventories before, but only small ones, and I've never done a shop before. I know I could figure them out, but I'd rather go a little smaller for my very first game jam and for one when I'm already pretty tired. Plus, it's a little more original not to go the "money is hp" route for this theme, because that's probably what everyone immediately thought of.

Well, I haven't done a ton of work just yet because it's fairly late my time. But I did mock up a really crude character model. I have some modeling experience with Maya, but I don't love doing it so I just wanted to throw together some cubes in Unity in the vague shape of a person. Next up, a simple walk animation so I can do the walk script and start on a bit of playable stuff.

Now that I've gotten some sleep, I'm feeling a bit more excited to get back to work. I'm still going to start with animations, because that's how I'm going to run my attack system. For the last game I made for class, I realized that I could put a disabled trigger collider on the weapon and turn it on for the attack animation. I'd like to do the same thing here, but expand it a bit by using the animator flowchart to set up attack combos, which will be new. Funny how I decided to do animations first when I actually hate animating... But it's not so bad when it's just simple stuff like this.

Why did I decide to do all my animations first? I haven't written a single line of code yet! I'm so tired. But at least all of my characters will draw from these same animations? Once I finish these, I'm done with all the character art. Then it's on to the actual combat and the environments. At this rate, I don't think my finished game will be terribly impressive, but at least now I know that making 20 animations in Unity without an IK when I don't like doing animation in the first place is a bad idea!

It might have taken all day, but I'm finally happy with how the animations look and transition! This was my first time using the animator controller to handle combo attacks, and I'm kind of proud of myself for it. I'm sure it's an obvious solution to a lot of people, but I figured it out without looking anything up, so it feels like I'm smart for figuring it out. And using the animations for the attacks means that I'm done with the attack system too, all I have to do is let the player do them on command!

I have made tons of progress today! I think the animations were dragging me down, but now that I'm completely done with them I've been really excited to get to the coding. Last night I finished the player movement, and today I've done the entire main menu and the whole backstage scene. When you first start the game, you get some story, and then between each fight you get access to a shop where you can increase your debt to buy new weapons. You can also equip the weapons you've already bought from this menu and see how much debt you have left. It's my first time making a shop of any kind, and even though it's super basic and there are only three things to buy, I'm super proud of how it turns out. Plus, I love the background I made; making models using only Unity's cubes (and some particle systems) is actually pretty of fun.

I'm pretty happy with my progress up until now, but I have to commute to campus and get to class today so I'll lose a few hours. I can't slack off now!

Last features:

-Polish up health UI

-Record the results of each battle so debt can be adjusted

-Enemy AI - movement, attack, everything

-Figure out what order to throw enemies at the player

-Win screen

I better get to work!

Well, the enemy will chase the player when it's healthy and then run when it's hurt. That bit's working, at least. But the attacks just aren't going right. Unfortunately, it's a game in a fighting arena! The fighting is the whole point! And that's the bit that doesn't work right. Which isn't much of a surprise, since I've never done anything quite like this, and also left it for last. But still, it'd be nice if it was at least somewhat playable.

The way it works now, the enemy will get right up close, not face the right direction (likely because of colliders), and then attack like crazy. And because they're the same speed as the player, you can't really escape them. Once they get close, they're sticking right to you forever.

The way I'd like it to work is to have the enemy get close to the player, maybe attack a few times, then sort of back off a bit so the player has to come towards them for a bit more challenge. I'm really not sure how to do that, though, or even what exactly I want.

It's pretty clear at this point that I'm going to have to settle, with so little time left and having other things to do. I think I'm going to go for giving the player the ability to sprint so the player can get away from the enemy, and then seeing if turning off some colliders makes the enemy actually face the right direction. But if anyone has any ideas or tips for how to do attack AI, I would absolutely welcome them!

EDIT: It was absolutely the colliders, the weapon handles (especially the spear!) were pushing the player away and making everything impossible. Turning them off made a big difference!

I made my game with Unity's WebGL package, so it runs in browser. But the upload page asks for a link - do I need to host the game somewhere else? And if so, where's a good place to upload it to? Thanks!

I'm not positive the submission went through, but it's now giving me the option to rate games, so it probably did?

Play it here! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/debtors-arena

Anyway, Debtors' Arena is a fighting game where you avoid debtors' prison by winning one-on-one fights. It was super down to the wire! I just barely finished it in time, so there are likely some balance issues and it's entirely possible the music doesn't entirely work, I didn't have time to check and I only playtested it once. Still, for my first jam ever I think I did well! I'm happy enough with the final product, and now I know how to better prioritize for next time. Plus, since next time is in October, I won't have to balance it with studying for finals.

I don't have any excuses for why I'm only just starting play/rate at the very end. School got out, and all I wanted to do was relax and sleep in, especially after doing a game jam and then finals a few days later! But I'm really glad I remembered this before the deadline! I guess I'll do what everyone else is - you rate my game, I'll rate yours.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/debtors-arena

I'm down to only needing about two more ratings! If you haven't checked out Debtors' Arena yet, I'd really appreciate a rating. And if I haven't already played your game, I'll be happy to rate you back. Procrastinators unite!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/debtors-arena

This was my first game jam ever, and even though I'm about to be a college senior studying game design I still consider myself very much an amateur. With that being said, I'm absolutely thrilled with my results!

Overall: 949th (2.981 average from 28 ratings)

Fun: 1006th (2.673 average from 28 ratings)

Innovation: 772nd (2.904 average from 28 ratings)

Theme: 515th (3.404 average from 28 ratings)

Graphics: 799th (3.096 average from 28 ratings)

Humor: 489th (2.923 average from 28 ratings)

Mood: 726th (3.1 average from 27 ratings)

These might not be the highest numbers, but for my first time making a game so quickly - and first fighting game - I'm pretty happy being middle of the pack. I was hoping for about 3 on my scores, and that's about what I got, so I have no complaints.

I learned a lot this jam, and so I'm sure I'll do better next time:

-I should focus on what I know. That means that, since I'm not super confident with animations (and don't like making them!), I shouldn't spend a whole day working on them and getting really demoralized. I also might not want to try a new game genre for the first time unless it's something relatively simple. Fighting games... are not easy.

-Simple is best. My original idea for the jam was much more complicated, so I went with my second idea that was simpler. And I still only just barely finished! So next time, I should start very simple, and if I have time, add extra features.

-Feedback (for in-game actions) is really important. I got a lot of people telling me that they wished my game had either auditory or visual feedback when you hit the opponent. I hadn't thought that it mattered, but clearly it does. Next game, I'll include that for sure.

-Feedback (on the game) is REALLY important. I forgot about play/rate until the last few days, so I just barely got enough ratings. Next time, I plan on doing it from the beginning. I loved hearing constructive criticism on my game and learning what I did well and what I need to fix. It was also really nice to get practice giving criticism and feedback. I had to really think - what specifically do I like? what specifically needs to change? I haven't done that much in the past, so getting the experience is sure to be helpful.

-Playtest! Especially with other people, if possible! I didn't have a hard time playing my own game because of course I knew the strategy, but it quickly became clear that other people were having a hard time with it. I left balance and testing for the very end, so I didn't really get a chance to make changes. Ideally, in October I'll have a friend or someone play the game a few times, so I can tell how it plays to someone else. I learned in class that it's important to have non-developers test your game, and now I have actual experience that that's true!

Thanks so much to everyone who rated my game and left feedback! I read everything you wrote, and have really taken it to heart. I'm very happy with how you rated me, but I'm confident that I can do a better job next time. I've got plans to do a few other jams this summer - I want to do Awful Summer Games and my college is hosting a jam as well - and I'm also doing a project with some friends, so next time we all meet I'll know what I'm doing much better. See you all in October!

It's been a while, but I'm back and ready to try again! I've learned so much since LD44, and I'm excited to show it off. I've started working with ShaderGraph and YarnSpinner, to name a few, so I'm hoping my game will look better and have better dialog if it's called for! I also took away a lot of lessons from my first jam, like "don't spend the first day animating by hand in Unity when you're bad at/hate to do animation." There's also a chance I'll be working with a friend this time (fingers crossed!), so hopefully I'll make something really great this time. Can't wait to get this all started!

For my first LD, I participated as a solo dev. This time, I have a lot more friends who went to college with me. Unfortunately, between full-time jobs and existing commitments and grad school, none of them were free this weekend. It's a shame, because it's always fun to work with friends, but on the other hand it's also thrilling to show what I can do with my own skills. Lately, I've been working on a big existing project that I was brought into after a lot of it was already done. It's been a while since the last time I made something that was just mine, and I can't wait to see what I'm able to achieve under my own power and nothing else. Here's hoping it all goes well for me!

It's almost time, so I'm making sure I have everything I need!

-Updated Unity

-Full glass of water

-Food delivery arranged

-Whiteboard to scrawl ideas on

-Music playlist

-All friends warned I'll be unavailable for a few days

I think I'm ready for the theme! Here's hoping it's a good one!

It seems like every year somehow the winning theme is one that almost everyone hates. I don't love this one, because it feels like we'll get a lot of really similar games, but I'd love to be proven wrong! It's taken a while, but I think I finally have a solid idea - I'm going to be adapting the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. (I have been working on a project set in Ancient Greece almost all year, so it's on my mind a lot these days.) Surely maze generation isn't too ambitious for a 72-hour jam?

I'm using Unity 2019.4.9f1 for the first time, and I've run into a really annoying problem. When I set Cursor.LockState = CursorLockMode.Locked, it no longer locks my mouse to the center of the game window but a bit below it. This means that if I'm using anything triggered by a click, I end up clicking out of the game view and defocusing it. This is making my game extremely difficult to playtest. I have moved the play window around and tried setting maximize on play but the cursor never centered. It seems like it is set to lock to a position somewhere below center. I checked in an earlier version of Unity and everything was fine, so is this just an error in this release? I also tried using CursorLockMode.Confined to see if that was working, and it confined me to an area the same size as the play view, but again shifted down by about 50%. Is there anything I can do about this, aside from saving everything as a .unitypackage and importing it into an earlier version of Unity? I'd greatly appreciate any help!

Pictured: approximate position of cursor (well below game window)

It's approaching 3am here and it's gotten to the point where anything new I start will take a long, long time to finish. I'm pretty happy with my work so far! I've got a mobile player and enemy, both of which can deal and take damage. I have an ugly but functional menu system. There are items in the game that, while still placeholder models, actually do things to affect the gameplay.

Tomorrow: maze generation algorithms (because I hate myself, apparently), a boss fight in phases, and if I have time dialog via YarnSpinner! I'm feeling really excited and motivated, so I'll probably drag myself out of bed early in the morning! Goodnight all (and good morning to those in other time zones)!