Hey!

So, finally taking part in my first LD. I've basically managed to get the whole weekend to myself so I'll have about as much time as one could hope to have in this kind of thing. But I had a question;

What is the stance on using engines in the compo?

I apologise if this is clearly answered somewhere and I've missed it but I was just wondering if using an engine excluded you from the compo. I get you're supposed to create everything from scratch but making an engine (and then a game in that engine) in two days seems like a fairly tall order. And if you CAN use engines, where is the line drawn between what you can and can't use? For example, obviously you can't use Unity's first person controller but can you use standard shaders or would you have to write your own?

Regardless of the answer, I'm almost certainly going to stick to the jam for my first game, but I would like to know. Looking forward to taking part!

So I've been all pumped up for my first game jam. Not entirely (but in large part) because of LD, I'd booked a day off work... Friday.

I'd seen it started at 2:00am my time and I'd seen it was 26th - 29th... as prepared to get a REALLY early night to get up stupidly early and start the jam as soon as the theme drops, I realised that the start time for me is 2:00am on the 27th!

That'll teach me to pay attention.

So it's too short notice to swap my Friday off for a Monday off (and in any case I do have some other stuff going on tomorrow), but it looks like my inaugural Jam will be on a Compo time limit :( But hey ho, I intend to make the best of it. Still really looking forward to this, will be there at kick off on the Saturday and raring to go. Have a great Jam everyone.

I probably should be further along considering I have been at this almost since kickoff, but I did make all the sprites and art is most certainly not my area. I originally planned to be in the Jam but as things are, I'm trying to keep myself within Compo rules... for now at least!

I didn't get as much content in the game as I'd have liked but if you'd told me last week that I'd manage a functional game under Compo rules for my first jam I'd have laughed!

You can find the game page here - https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/dea-7h

The itch.io page with web player and standalone download here; https://b3agz.itch.io/dea-7h

And here's some screen shots. I'm going to bed!

I'll be honest, the main point of this post is to plug the fact that I have a quick little video about my game up. But while I'm here I wanted to ask; is anyone else planning to stick with their LD entry?

I'm planning on continuing with my game and making something more substantial out of it (you can find it here https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/dea-7h if you're interested), which essentially means starting from scratch as my code quickly became a HOT MESS as the deadline loomed ever closer! Anyone else thinking about making there game into a full project?

https://youtu.be/okIZbcNcpYQ

The feedback I've had on my game has been surprising, I wasn't expecting so many people to play it, let alone have almost nothing but good things and constructive critiques to say about it. So that wealth of play-test input together with the fact that I really enjoyed making the game and it seems to be a relatively scarce concept (I haven't seen many games like this at least) have brought me to the decision to continue developing it beyond LD.

Well I say "continue". I started from scratch. I don't know about you guys but my rushed code was a HOT MESS. Dear Lord I hope no one actually looks at my source code.

I've got a first Dev Blog video up which I'll stick at the end of the post if you're interested. And if you haven't played/rated my entry, please do. You can find it here; https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/dea-7h

Moving Forward

My game idea involves randomising a lot of NPCs. When I cobbled together my entry I had the most basic sprites imaginable put together in a hacky way;

This was something I couldn't help due to the time constraints, but it severely limited the visual characteristics of my NPCs, which is a problem in a game where you have to identify an NPC based on those limited attributes. So naturally the first point of order was to make more detailed NPCs with more distinct characteristics. I set about writing code that would take in different layers (body, t-shirt, hair, etc) and paint them into one complete sprite, colouring each layer with a random selection from a predefined set of colours.

Adding different variations of those layers (for example, long hair, short hair, balding hair), as well as the option to skip that layer entirely (jacket or no jacket) already increased the visual variation in my NPCs ten-fold.

And before the game is done I intend to have more clothing variations, different body types, and so on. Another thing I want to add in the proper game is distinct locations. My entry essentially just had one "street" that you could move up and down, but I'd like to have different areas the player can visit, which would add both an element of exploration, and an additional attribute to learn about your target, as the NPC you're looking for could be in a specific location.

So that's where I'm at. After a week of casual evenings, I've essentially got the stage I was at in hour 6 of the actual Compo. But I'm cool with that, because it looks a heck of a lot better!

If you're interested in my dev blog video on this, you can find it below. And thanks again for all the playing/rating of my game. You guys have been amazing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfqE4MCA8yw

Hi all,

I started a little video dev blog for the post-LD progress of my LD44 entry. If anyone is interested, you can watch it below.

Also if you haven't played/rated my game, I'd love you for literal minutes if you did; https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/dea-7h

https://youtu.be/rKDsa9nkhXs