I'm really looking forward to the compo weekend! Here's what I'm planning to use: - Engine: Unity - 2D graphics: Photoshop and a Wacom tablet - 3D modeling: Houdini - Audio: Ableton Live and a eurorack modular synth

For music I'm planning on jamming something with my hardware modular synth. I'm probably just gonna hit record, start patching the synth and once I'm satisfied I'll just select one or more parts from the recording as the soundtrack. It's gonna be weird and veerry rough around the edges but hopefully it'll stand out! I might even do some sound effects with the modular but I'll probably end up doing those with Ableton Live's software instruments instead for convenience's sake.

For 3D graphics, I'm planning to use Houdini with a lowpoly 3D painting HDA I've been working on (It's still WIP but you can download the current toolset here). Here's what it does:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-W5OKnnRpGc

Good luck everyone!

Day 1 of the compo is nearing its end for me! Here's a video of what I have currently:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yibfM16yU0

Most of the basics are there. The AI is a doofus but luckily the stupid behavior matches the stupid looks. :D

Day 2 is gonna be tight! I need more monsters, environment props, a proper level, music, sfx and the collectibles that tie in to the theme... :)

Got my music finished. I was originally planning on using my eurorack modular for the music to get a more unique (or just plain weird) soundscape for my game but since the time is running out I just cranked out something with Ableton Live in about half an hour: https://soundcloud.com/john-peeba/ld40-music/s-bc4Y3

I played it safe by using just a few U-He Hive VST's presets I've previously made and I just bathed everything in reverb. It's not the greatest composition I've made but I think it fits the somewhat dystopian outlook of my game quite well. :)

My compo game America 2018 now has a WebGL version that you can play here, right in your browser! :open_mouth:

Here's some post-mortemish observations about the making of the game. What worked out nicely and what didn't turn out like I expected...

Let's start with the most obvious firts: the graphics. To get the weird "lowpoly meets marker drawings" -graphical style I used a custom lowpoly painting tool for Houdini to create the graphics. It worked adequately and I think the game has a pretty nice style. I'll continue improving the tool for future projects, especially its performance since it get pretty slow when there are lots of strokes.

The tool also had a feature of generating a sort of a time lapse series of meshes that can be then played in sequence in Unity. It looked pretty cool but it didn't end up very well utilised in the game. I used it to fade in meshes in the distance (so it kinda looks like a weird streaming/LOD thing) and fade out the monsters after they die (although I had to speed it up a lot to make the game feel responsive and they're bathed in particles so it's not that visible here either). So all in all, think I wasted like two or three hours of my precious time on an effect that wasn't that crucial for the end product. :grin:

I was originally planning on using my eurorack modular synth to create the music for the game. In all likelihood it would have been weird, awesome and it would have stood out but when the time came to make music I scrapped the idea. It would just have taken too much time, probably like 1-3 hours (which curiously equals the time I "wasted" on that effect I described earlier :wink: ). Instead I just cranked out something in Ableton Live using familiar VSTs with familiar presets and some samples. I quickly jammed a few simple melodies and rhythms and then I bathed almost everything in reverb to make it sound, uh, big. A cheap trick, I know, but works well enough for something like this :innocent:

Regardless I am quite happy with the music since I only spent 30 minutes making it and, while the song is simple, it fits the game's mood well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kkcj12wyRhA

So how about the game itself? I think it's OK. I've never made an FPS but I just used the Unity FPS controller (with very little changes to parameters and code) and it did its job pretty well with close to 0 effort. Overall the game plays well and is mildly entertaining and relatively bug-free. I think the biggest flaw with the entire game is that the gameplay itself isn't that special and, even though I scaled down my initial plans during the development, I never really aimed that high with gameplay. I consciously wanted to focus on solid implementation and production values but I think I missed the mark here with having a too simple gameplay. Next time I definitely want to emphasize the game design aspect more. :thumbsup:

After thinking about and then briefly discarding two ideas for the theme, I landed on one that I think is a keeper.

It's tentatively called Glacier Climb and it's a physics-driven puzzle game where you solve climbing challenges. The twist is that you can, at will, freeze your climber in place and then use the frozen remains as a platform for future climbers.

It's going to be technically somewhat challenging. Building a physics driven character controls that are fun and fairly solid is going to be tough since I don't have that much experience with physics-driven gameplay. Tweaking physics systems can be super time consuming, which is not a great quality for a game jam game, but I'm here for the challenge so I don't mind! :smile:

I'm going to use Unity 3D with 2D physics, Photoshop for graphics and Ableton Live with a handful of VST plugins for SFX and music.

Good luck with your jam games everyone! :trophy:

Alright! It's the dawn of the second day of the jam and here's my results from yesterday:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wSGcNlMYYg

The game is a mountain climbing challenge where you climb increasingly difficult challenges using the frozen remains of the people who have tried to climb it before :grimacing:

Most of the basics of the planned core gameplay are pretty much there. Most importantly the physics-driven character movement works and is solid and it looks just as funny as I hoped it would. Freezing the climbers at the will of the player to aid future climbers works too and is not too macabre to not be funny :smile:. Previously the character was a ballerina for a while since it matched to style of the movements pretty nicely but freezing those characters turned out to be way too grim :grimacing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wV1XnAxE8rw

As you can see from these early physics tests, I've kinda gotten back to the original concept of the character although in a slimmer shape since longer legs worked better:

My glacier climbing game is now on the final stretches of development!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fj_v3jmhJKE

I added a sprinkling of audio by making a super simple ambient soundscape in Ableton Live. I just played a few trusted synth pad presets, bathed it in reverb and added a windy environment sound on top from my sample libraries. It took me like half an hour but it really enhances the grim-but-funny mood of the game nicely :v:

All I need now is just a handful more levels and maybe a layer or two of additional visual polish if I still have the energy. I've been real happy with how this game has turned out this far. The gameplay isn't super engaging or deep but somehow it is still fun and funny to play. :smiley:

Alright, I'm in. First I have to admit that the theme didn't immediately excite me since the previous project I've worked on was Noita which actually fits the theme 100%. :)

But after a bit of thought I think I have something that would be fun to work on and might turn out to be a fun little game so I present to you: Goldf!

Here's the preliminary concept (which probably changes along the way but that's part of the fun)... You walk or fly in underground caverns discovering gold nuggets. You can only move the nuggets by "golfing" with them. You need to fling them to a portal to collect them, which consumes the portal, and finally you need exit through a portal as well before you run out of oxygen. There might be dangerous creatures as well which you can eliminate by hitting them with the gold nuggets. I'm hoping that there's a nice risk vs. reward kind of gameplay loop there where you need to balance your collected loot vs. the risk of running out of air.

Technically I'm hoping to do simple procedurally generated caverns (I have an idea ready) and I want to do a field of view effect, similar to Teleglitch, which I've already used once before in a LD game but I think the trick would work here nicely as well...

Let's see how it pans out! Time to fire up Unity and start working!

I got the bare basics of a cave generation working for Goldf, a subterranean gold nugget golfing game! Here's a quick writeup of the method I came up with to produce caves like the one above.

First for the terrain I needed a bunch of simple mesh objects to represent chunks of terrain. Each mesh contains a few objects: the wall itself (basically a flat polygon), an extruded shadow mesh (for a fake LOS effect) and a collider. I a bunch of these meshes procedurally in SideFX Houdini by splitting a plane into pieces with voronoi fracture: https://youtu.be/Gk-euaYNQMA

This produces convex shapes that are very kind for realtime collisions which is somewhat important here since I want to be sloppy with the wall placements with a lot of overlapping and unoptimal "useless" geometry.

For generating a level a first scatter a bunch of these objects into the scene (with loads of overlapping objects) and then I trace a path through it somewhat randomly and delete objects around the path. You can see the system in action here: https://youtu.be/TA6PrO02CiQ

Next I'll probably have to implement a proper character controller since, as you can see from the video, I can right now only pretend to be playing the game by moving the "player" manually with a mouse. :smile:

Making progress on Goldf, the subterranean gold nugget golfing game! I now have a basic player movement and collisions. There's also some visual flair and polish on the character as well as on the surroundings.

Adding visual feedback from player movement is always crucial for getting a good juicy game feel. Tricks like the flight particles or tilting the player model when moving sideways are super cheap to pull off. Adding some secondary movement - in this case the arms - can add a lot of character too. I highly recommend spending a few moments on adding small touches like those since their return on investment can be huge.

Here's a longer clip as video: https://youtu.be/jxVa_3luEok

https://youtu.be/LXaWjYEoXlk

Starting to nail down the basic gameplay of Goldf and while cutting a bunch of planned (and already implemented!) features and complexity, the game starts to look more and more like Desert Golfing/Golf on Mars with a game structure copied directly from those. I didn't plan on going that way at all initially so I think I want to utilize the character more to differentiate better. Right now you can manipulate the gold nugget with your character, which should help when the levels build on intensity, but I think it still needs something more... We'll see! It's getting late here so a night's sleep should help me gain some clarity.

https://youtu.be/RMrkhZ1z_do

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/$246705

Yay, my game of subterranean gold nugget golfing is done! The last six hours I've been struggling to get a WebGL build working and I've failed so you'll have to make do with a boring ol' zip+exe for now.

Mini Post Mortem

I'm happy with how the game plays, looks, sounds and feels like. I kept the visuals pretty clean and minimal and I like how it turned out. Small bits of polish and eye candy here and there were certainly worth the effort. Technically I'm most happy with the procedural level generation. It's robust and it produces at least somewhat interesting levels. Audio side of things was a pretty quick routine job but the routine definitely helped with getting an acceptable quality quickly. I used Ableton Live and xFer Serum synth VST with a bunch of known and trusted presets for the music. For sound effects I also used Serum both with heavily modified presets and a few made from scratch. For the most commonly heard sfx I made variants with different pitches that fit the scale of the background music so the whole soundscape kinda gels together.

As I iterated on the game and streamlined the design, which admittedly was way too complex for a weekend solo project, the game ended up resembling Desert Golfing/Golf on Mars much more closely than I intended. It's a bit of a shame but making a fun game is all that matters in the end and I hope I pulled that off!

Now for some much needed sleep.

Phew, it was a huge hassle but my endless subterranean golfing simulator, Goldf, now has a working HTML5/WebGL build as a post-compo update. You can play it here: https://peeba.itch.io/goldf

Compo page: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/goldf