So.. pretty new to this, been following the events for a while. I'll probably be using these tools:

• Game Engine:
  • Unity3D
• IDE:
  • JetBrains Rider
• Graphics:
  • Paint.NET
  • Blender
• Audio:
  • Audacity

As this is my first game for Ludum Dare, I'm going to try and keep things simple and easy so that I don't need to over work myself for the next 72 hours.

I might stream the development over on Twitch.tv but I am currently undecided on that option just yet.

Source code will be available on GitLab!

Best of luck to all of you!

- Bitheral

I have an idea

I finally came up with an idea, which I think I'm happy with. I did come up with 4 and wish I had the time to possibly integrate the 4 ideas into 1 game, but I probably won't have time. I haven't done this type of game before so it's definitely going to be a challenge for me to do this for the first time.

Since the game will have it's source available on GitLab I may as well share the idea.

You start in a procedurally generated room with 3 doors (This stays consistent throughout the game) where all 3 doors go to a different room. Each room will have it's own way of filling up the space of the room, either by water, smoke, and something else that I might come up with during it's development.

Anyway, enough blogging, and start developing!

I have submitted my game for all of you to check out, it's called Solar Engulfment

I'm somewhat happy with the finished product, I mean due to 2 previous ideas not working out, and only having 1 day left on the Jam countdown, I needed to think of something quickly, and this came to mind.

The premise of Solar Engulfment is to escape a forever expanding sun whilst also saving as many colonies as possible.

Now, I know there are bad things about the game. - First one is.. No sound, due to me having roughly 4 hours left to submit the game, I didn't think I'd have enough time to produce sounds, especially sounds that sound high-quality, that would relate to the action, such as when you move your ship forward, it would make a low rumbling noise. This also goes for music.

• The other bad thing about the game is that all text, is not in a UI component. Yes, you read that right. Since I'm using Unity with TextMeshPro enabled, I am able to use a 3D Text, and due to some problems during the finishing of the game, the text was not rendering correctly in the Canvas.

So in the rules of Ludum Dare, there is a "Prizes" section mentioning "That said, you have a game now. What are you going to do with it?".

What should I do with Solar Engulfment?

I don't really have the time to work on it right now, I only did Ludum Dare this week because I really wanted to participate with this competition, not to necessarily to compete, but just to have fun creating a game. I would really love to hear some feedback on Solar Engulfment to see what I could possibly add or improve when I have time to work on it.

If I ever manage to do another LD, I'll at least try to do it with a team, or try to manage my time better as if I had the full 3 days to work on Solar Engulfment, I'm sure it would be much better that it's current state

It's that time again! Already pumped up to create another game. After LD42, I think I need to focus more on my time when thinking of ideas to plan the idea out, which is definitely what I'm going to be doing this time!.

Same as last time, I'll probably be using:

Game Engine: Unity3D (2018.3.0b12)

Modelling: Blender

Audio: Audacity

Graphics/Textures: Adobe Photoshop CC 2018

IDE: JetBrains Rider

I am really hoping that a good theme gets chosen this time round.

EDIT: Fixed Unity3D version

As the title explains, this is my 3rd time entering Ludum Dare.

# Change in mindset

So for this event, I have changed my mindset of how I will be creating these games within a limited time, but first, I have to give credit where credit is due. HonestDanGames had inspired me to start coming up with ideas with the themes that are being shown in during the Theme Votings BEFORE the event starts. My last 2 entry ideas were both made up on the spot as soon as the event started.

Thinking of themes before the jam starts seems obvious to do to probably a majority of the participants and I am confused to why I didn't do this in the first place.

This can be seen in Solar Engulfment, my first submission. Solar Engulfment was an LD42 submission, with the theme being "Running out of space". When the theme dropped, I did have the obvious idea of having to delete data from a computer; An idea which I had seen multiple times after I had published my game. The original idea for Solar Engulfment was the player needing to escape from a room that was being flooded with water; This idea was not achievable to me as I wanted to have Fluid Dynamics implemented but I couldn't find a good solution and so I went back to the drawing board and came up with what you see now.

Now for Caprae Mortem, Caprae Mortem was a LD43 submission with the theme being "Sacrifices must be made" or something similar to that. I could not come up with an idea when the theme dropped. I distinctly remember staying up late until the theme dropped and going to bed; When I woke up, I had a look at what people were doing with the theme, until I saw a post which mentioned something about Satan or whatever, and then I thought of how you would sacrifice a goat to Satan as a form of worship [I don't study religion or care about religion so I'm unsure if I'm right on that], then low and behold, you see Caprae Mortem's result.

# Ludum Dare 44 Themes...

I won't lie, the themes this time round are terrible. Original opinion, I know.

I haven't been able to come up with ideas for a majority of the themes, so far, I have 19 (out of a total of 48) themes that have ideas. These themes, I may add, only have 1 idea to them, no theme on my current list has more than 1 idea. Some may wonder why you'd want more than 1 idea; I think it's important to have more than 1 in case you are incapable of doing that idea and need something to fall back on, something like I did with Solar Engulfment.

I've also had a look back at Ludum Dare 42 and Ludum Dare 43 themes and noticed that there are duplicates. Let's list them shall we?

All themes are with respective listing, meaning that number 1 for LD42, will be number 1 for LD44.

• Ludum Dare 42

  1. One minute
  2. It's spreading
  3. Colour as a gameplay feature
  4. One enemy only
  5. Four elements
  6. Decay
  7. Safe in the dark
  8. You can't control the player
  9. Alchemy & Magic
  10. You can't save them all
  11. You are the final boss
  12. Light is dangerous
  13. Floating islands
  14. You control the environment, not the player
  15. You are not the main character
  16. Shelter

• Ludum Dare 44

  1. 30 seconds - It consists of a limited time to complete or perform a task
  2. Contagious
  3. Colour changes everything
  4. Only one enemy
  5. Four elements
  6. Decay
  7. Stay in the dark
  8. You control the enemies
  9. Alchemy
  10. You can't save them all
  11. You are the final boss
  12. Stay in the dark
  13. Floating worlds
  14. Control the environment, not the player
  15. You are a side character.
  16. Shelter

I do understand that people want to do these themes and possibly see what other people would do if the theme was chosen and I am completely fine with that, but I think I speak for some people where some of us are getting annoyed that these themes keep being suggested and chosen for theme voting. I personally think that those 16 themes that are duplicates of Ludum Dare 42, possibly Ludum Dare 43 as well, could have been entirely different unique themes and as I am still new to Ludum Dare, when themes come up like, Alchemy, I find it hard at how I would implement that into Unity, and needing to research of how Alchemy was theorised to have worked.

Or possibly a better example, 30 seconds or 1 minute; I'd need to think of an idea that would get the user to do something in a limited time. Sure, you have the possibility of testing reaction skills such as "Click the left mouse button when you think it's been x amount of time" but it's a very repetitive gameplay idea and can be very boring to play after a couple of minutes.

Anyway, enough ranting!

I plan on using the following: - Programming: - Unity3D 2019 - JetBrains Rider 2018 - Art: - Adobe Photoshop CC 2018 - Sound: - Audacity - Modelling: - Blender - Planning: - Trello

I hope that everyone enjoys this jam and can come up with a game idea that is really fun and exciting to play! Good luck to all of you, can't wait to play some of the games that you create with the best abilities you have, whether it's art, sound, gameplay, etc!

This will be my fourth time that I will be participating Ludum Dare; My last participation didn't go so well, so I'm hoping for a much better outcome this time around! Good luck to everyone who is participating.

After a long hiatus from doing Ludum Dare (Not really, I've participated in LD44, LD45, LD46, all of which were uncompleted), I'm back and completed my first ever Compo event, and the game is called Drilling Rig.

I'm delighted with the result I have made for Drilling Rig, especially for my first Compo event. Even though I did not complete all the features I wanted to implement, I got a decent number of features.

However, this game may seem incomplete or look more or less like a simple prototype to some of you. You may be correct on that, but I had no direction with what to do with the game, in all honesty. I had ideas of what I could implement, yes, but the game has no goal, mainly because of the chosen theme: Deeper and Deeper.

This theme was on my list of not being chosen because it's too simple. Much like the game that I have produced, what is the game/theme supposed to achieve? The feature I was planning on (continuing to implement) was an entire economic system. With the materials you mine, you can sell the materials and gain money to upgrade your driller. I did not fully implement this feature as I was unsure of the purpose of upgrading the driller would be.

Maybe there's a speed upgrade or a bigger drill-bit upgrade to dig more blocks at once. How would you progress in a single level game? Make the player achieve all the upgrades? In my eyes, this theme is similar to completing a game that has no replayability; for example, take "The Beginner's Guide", which takes roughly 2 hours to complete. Even though there's no "achievement" in the game, you understand the story it guides you through. Once you have finished the game, however, when you replay it, you already know what's happened, so the game doesn't make much more of an impact than what it made the first time. Now don't get me wrong, there is a severe difference between replayability and enjoyment. But how many times can you replay the same game before you start to lose enjoyment?

Anyway, here's my summed up Post-Mortem for Drilling Rig!

The good things:

In comparison to Solar Engulfment and Caprae Mortem, I have improved by a ton. The most obvious thing about this improvement is the World Generation. In any game that includes some landscape, I want that landscape to be procedurally generated (unless the game has a story of some sort). So the player can have a unique experience from any other player, similar to Minecraft, Equilinox or Astroneer. Though the World Generation script is not very efficient due to the generation of many cube prefabs, thus rendering many vertices. It is an excellent start to world generation with different materials and processes. If I were to implement caves or the like, I think I would have perfected a simple voxel World Generation script.

The bad things

As mentioned before, I could not implement the features I wanted, an economic system, possible upgrades, and others. Again, I think this is more or less due to the theme that people chose rather than the game I produced. If the theme was something similar to "Deeper and Darker" or the like, maybe I could have come up with a thrilling game where you would have to avoid contact with monsters deeper you go in the depths of darkness. Whilst with "Deeper and Deeper", it is just too vague to get a good game idea or game with a sense of replayability.