This was my first LD. I heard about it before and played some games created for it without even knowing they were created in 48 hours.

I have to say it has been an awesome experience really. I wish I could thank you all individually for creating so great atmosphere here. Also, the voting system is genial.

Ok, enough praising. Let’s talk about my game.

What went good:
– I came up with the concept quite fast and sticked to it until the end
– I read some quides and stories by other LDers in advance, that’s probably why the dialogue is there
– I finally used git for my project
– I got enough sleep, so my productivity didn’t drop
– The music. It was actually my first attempt at music making
– I didn’t visit facebook or similar throughout the weekend
– I wasn’t disturbed by anyone

What went bad:
– My eating schedule was messed up. I had one HUGE meal throughout the whole weekend and nothing else
– I wrote some terrible collision code at the start thinking I will have not to return to it ever again, but turned out I had to adjust it a lot of times. This actually caused some bugs with collisions
– The difficulty. Let me talk a bit about this. So, I really like this kind of “skill” games, one example for all is Super Meat Boy (all bandages). Of course I want to make it fun for me, and I want the levels to be challenging. I create levels that are hard and nicely challenging for me, but combine some skill in the genre with designing levels which I know how to win, and you get impossible levels for other people. Which really sucks. You know, you spend most of the time on mechanics and features, and then you lose it all on level design. This exact thing happened with my earlier project, but I didn’t learn for some reason. The worst part is that most of the interesting features are in the levels 90% of the players will never get to. It has a grow mechanic, but I think nobody reached that yet. I really hope I will finally learn and start making proper difficulty curve.
– Too long levels perhaps? It is probably frustrating to have to go through the whole level if you die at the end

Anyway, here is a chronological log which I wrote up during the weekend.

5 hours till start
So, in preparation, I set up my repository, learned to work with Bosca Ceoil and sfxr for music and sounds, and I think I am ready. I can’t wait for this to finally start.

I had several ideas written up. I think I had an idea for about 10 themes. I lost them all because I forgot to save. Whatever.

Anyway, I have a little neat concept that could – with some tweaks – fit most of the themes. Well, not most, but some.

I really hope the theme will not end up being Growing. Like… what… would I do…

Control the environment… same…

I guess I will complain about theme anyway. I like isolation, stick together and strength in numbers the most.

I think I have everything set up, including food and beverage for the weekend. The best part is my parents are leaving the house for the weekend, so I will not have my workflow disrupted at all.

I think I better get to bed so I can get up and dev all day and all night and all day and half the night. This… is gonna be awesome. I really hope I will keep this blog running and updated.

Ok, I lied about the “go sleep” part. I set up the page, set up the canvas, made resize function and basic hello world. That is not considered making the game yet right?

Man I am so excited.

Ok, 4 hours remain. I will get hopefully 8 hours of sleep. See you, for real now.

Almost 8 am now, 5 hours in. The themes are the two worst ones. Two button controls and growing. Darn.

I at least have an idea about Two button controls. Acceleration game where you can accelerate into two directions and have to bounce off walls and shit.

Time means hours and minutes since start. Add 3 hours to get local time.

5:16 I got it going. I imported some input handlind from earlier projects and got menu up.

5:39 Level displays properly, let’s get into player physics.

5:44 Player displays and can be moved like I wanted him to. Next step – wall collisions.

6:28 Bouncing off wall finally works properly.

6:45 Ok, bouncing works. I should probably make a spreadsheed with todo and ideas.

7:18 Ok, now it works. For real now.

8:48 I got working on some dialogues and story. I will have to think of something funny. I am in the phase, where the core is working and I don’t know whether to add some features or leave them be.

10:25 My workflow is starting to slow down. I have no idea what to do next.

11:06 I just made music and generated some sound effects. Will implement them shortly.

12:19 Third level, yay. Music is not as terrible as I was worrying. The loop sounds a bit odd.

13:19 Ok, here comes the level designing. I have 2 tutorial levels and 1 real level. I think 2 tutorial is quite enough. I was thinking… maybe about 20 levels is just about right.

15:37 I took a little break. I don’t know what to do next once again. I even got the sounds done this time. Also, I said “screw menu”.

17:11 It works. I created quite a lot of dialogues to keep the players playing. Becuase the power of this game is in its later levels, and to get somewhere, I need something to hook people on. Getting close to half-time, and I am out of inspiration already. I added ice, which was probably a good idea. I need something else. Active powerups like for example instant stop is not an option with only 2 control keys. I was thinking maybe some speed upgrade, but that sounds a bit stupid.

18:03 Gravity changers. They turned out to be pretty good actually. Made one level with them, and it is awesome.

18:40 level 7 complete. I have a long night ahead of me if I really want 20 levels.

19:08 I will add some grow mechanics. While you are on a grow tile, you get bigger, making it all harder. Once you get too big (48px), you just explode.

20:39 I got the grow mechanic working. Now I need ideas for levels.

24:11 Half time, here we go. I was expanding my music, then accidentally hit Esc and lost like 1 hour of work. Darn. The music sounds like shit, but I will keep it in anyway. I tried to make the “graphics” look less like 5-year-old-made by making the colors cooler, but it seems it started lagging. Darn. The levels keep going, but I need ideas.

28:12 Night wasn’t as productive as I hoped. I have 10 levels now, and made new music. I just am out of ideas for levels dammit. I have enough game elements for various combos, but I just don’t know where things are stuck. I guess I will go get some sleep after 24 hours. I have like 10 hours of work available now, should be enough to finish this thing off.

36:30 I have 13 levels, and I think that’s enough. My play-through is about 30 minutes, so I suppose other people will have completion time somewhere around 1 hour. That’s fine I guess.

39:00 It is complete, but it NEEDS more levels. Some of the features are only merely introduced. I have 9 hours, I should be fine. But the rest is complete. And also feels complete. I haven’t even met that rare bug in two runs, it is not even worth to be bothered by. Also, my second run with adjusted levels was 15 minutes.

39:09 FUCK! It lags like hell in Firefox. Goddamn Firefox, I hate it even more that IE.

39:56 Phew. Fixed it. Note: Firefox takes for EVER to change ctx.font. Several adjustments to this fixed it, as I was changing it like n times every frame. I can’t even upvote the random guy who saved me on stackexchange.

40:08 I just realized I haven’t eaten in 24 hours. Weird I didn’t even notice it. Well, I ate had a shitload of lentils the other day, so I guess that’s why.

41:33 I made 2 more levels. But I need AT LEAST one more to make it 15.

44:17 I managed to hopefully fix one really bad bug with collisions. The size change fucked up everything. I added last very hard final level. It is done. DONE! The very last step is submission. Nothing goes wrong with that right? RIGHT?

47:57 I browsed around Ludum Dare a bit. I added several little things, but my ftp is fucked up. Hope it works.

I am excited about this. I already know my way around a bit better and earned some experience since the last Ludum Dare.

With final school exams coming soon, I can’t spend the whole weekend deving. So I decided about several things already. I am not going to use collisions this time. I had my game based on collisions last time in LD34, and it was cancer. I would really love to make a grid puzzle. They are quite easy to make, the main part is coming up with the idea. One of the reasons I am going to make a grid puzzle is that I suck at them, so I hope I can’t set the difficulty too high like the last time. It may be challenging to come up with a grid puzzle for some of the themes, but I think I will come up with something eventually.

Good luck everyone!

This is my third LD. I am really happy I get to attend so historical event like this.

I like to set myself a genre before theme announcement. Last time I said I would do a grid puzzle game, and the theme worked kind of well with that.

This time I would love to make a real time strategy game. Or at least turn based. Let’s see what themes there will be and if it fits that genre at least remotely.

Tools:

• Language: HTML5/JS
• Editor: notepad++
• Debugger: Chrome
• Sounds: sfxr
• Music (?): BoscaCeoil (I would love to compose some piano song perhaps)
• Graphics: GIMP
• Recording/video editing: Auto Screenshot Capture by daanav + Virtualdub + Windows movie maker (shameless)
• Version control: Git + Github

I can’t wait for all that to start again. I will give it my best. I can’t wait for all the food, coding till the morning sun, browsing other entries, getting feedback. I am so glad Ludum Dare is happening again.

4th time. It’s been a year since my first LD, the time really flies by.

I am not very proud of my last LD and I am really motivated to make up for that this time. I will work more on time management throughout the weekend and make sure the concept I will implement is good before wasting 10 hours on it.

I will try to keep it simple this time, but really work on the gameplay. I would love to finally make some rts perhaps. But who knows.

Tools:
JavaScript + html5 + css
Notepad++
Chrome
Audacity
SFXR
Maybe Bosca Ceoil if I want to make music
Gimp
Some auto screenshot thing + Virtualdub + windows movie maker

I was born ready for this one.

“Pick a number between 1 and 10. You’ll get that many points only if that number was selected by less than 20% of other prisoners”

Just pick a number. I had to start over 12 hours in, but I am quite happy with my thing. I finally made some non-terrible graphics and sounds for a game, so that is a success in itself for me. I mostly want to just see what the graphs will look like after hopefully several hundred plays.

Those are two important lessons I learned this LD. If you feel like reading… boltkey.cz/blog

So, I finally moved to https, which means I can finally make my projects that use databases and stuff get to work on Kongregate. If you haven’t yet, go play Just pick a number there!

Although I don't really get what is the Earth day all about and why does it even exist, I think it is a nice little coincidence that we have a fitting theme for that. And I saw some games already with something revolving around the planet we share.

I am doing a turn-based strategy game about leaving Earth because of pollution and terraforming/colonizing the solar system, where you have to strategize with movement of the other planets and choose the correct times for technological advancements on Earth and to colonize (when other planets are near-by). I can't wait to put together a prototype.

I skewed from a "deep" turn-based strategy to a light and colorful skill game.

The story is like this: it is year 25xx and it became impossible to continue the life on Earth. Recently, a break-through technology was invented, allowing terraformation and colonizatoin of planets just in a bat of an eye. Make the gravity work for you and conquer the solar system! Deployment needs to be done fast though, before everyone who is left dies.

Each space ship has a destination. If it reaches its destination, you get 4 points, if it reaches any planet, you get 1 point, and if it burns in the sun, you lose 5 points. Your "ammo" gradually decreases, so often you have to decide whether wait for the system to align, or just spray everything to the planet which is nearest to you.

Many colorful effects and polish coming!

The site throws some error when I try to upload files, so here is a gif on Imgur

The day has come to leave the earth once and for all. That obviously needs great artilery skills, how else would you know where the launched ships end up?

Ships color means its destination. Red ship goes to the red planet etc. Click to send a ship in that direction. You get 20 points for delivering a ship to its destination, lose 5 points for wrong planet, and lose 10 points for losing the ship.

Each ship costs you 1 mil population, and your population also decreases over time. When you run out of population, the score is shown after all the ships arrive to planets (or sun).

Game page

I had the day to think about the theme, but I was afk the whole Saturday. Usually, I was quite good on time, so I hope to finish my game in one day. I have quite big stakes, but I really like my concept and am confident I will finish something in time for the compo. And, there is still the Jam, right?

Anyway. My game will be a survival game. You are left at Place Of Weather Experimental Research for the polar night, and have to skillfully manage your stamina to get batteries for the Place, which will increase the temperature, slowing down your stamina decrease. And, you need to get food. And there may be upgrades. And it will be good.

I once again started with an over-coplicated idea in mind, and had to start over half way through. I however really like my new thing. It will be quite basic runner game. I tried to create a 3d feel using only basic javascript functions. I think it is turning out quite good.

https://boltkey.cz/battery/

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/w-e-r

I don't really like downloading multiple 20Mb unity games. Feel free to comment your game and have it reviewed. I do honest and sometimes quite critical reviews.

I really didn't expect to get a top 100 in any category, but I got one top 10 and two top 100s!

I had two concepts which I abandoned. I started with an overly complicated one, which I realized I would never finish. With about 15 hours left, I switched to something a bit simpler, which turned out to not be fun at all. 3 hours before the end, I was ready to just give up, but for the final stretch, I decided to make something else. So I did. And somehow, I got pretty good ranks. Check out my "game" at https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/w-e-r

The time really flies!

I recently got myself into boardgaming, so it will probably show in my game as well. I realized just how great and fun deckbuilding and worker placement systems are. I may try and do something involving one of these two, or both. I must keep myself from over complicating it, and backing out from my initial ideas early enough. Or, I also may do some social experimentish thingy. People seem to like that. Or a bullet hell. That could be fun.

I am quite excited for this LD, as I will finally once again have all the time during the weekend.

I will use my classic and proven tools. I only will finally stop using GIMP and move on to some... good... tools. I will give Kyra a try.

Anyway, have fun everyone who reads this, and don't forget, the goal is not to get as many top 100s (or top 10s) as possible, but to have fun, learn something new and make something YOU will be proud of.

I have a thing or two to do in my preparation day. I have to clean my room, clean the kitchen, cook for the whole weekend, get all my tools up and running, clean up the desktop (in both meanings), and get some schoolwork done (hopefully). I will make something good finally this time. Something... elegant.

You know, in games, there is a concept I don't exactly know how to call. The thing is, sometimes you have mechanics that have huge implications, and there is something "behind" them. I don't know exactly how to explain myself. If you look at Go for example, it has very few simple rules, but there has been whole industry for thousands of years studying and mastering this game. On the other hand, you have some atmospheric games like Eldritch Horror. There are many rules, a lot of text, many things to do in a turn. That is all fine, but... there is not much "behind" those mechanics. Once you grasp how the mechanics work and stuff, you "get" the game and there is not much more to explore.

And in my opinion, it is better when there is something "behind" the mechanics. This concept can be difficult to grasp in connection to videogames, but the basic idea is: if you can think of clever mechanics that are not autotelic, you will have less work to do, and with less coding and developing, you can create more gameplay.

Hope the last paragraphs made sense to somebody at least.

Anyway,

See you on the other side.

3.5 hours in, and already like my game. Looks promising to me so far.

The idea will be that you set how much score you get from a level before playing the level. The more score you set, the worse your ship's stats will be. Then, you just need to survive a wave of enemies with the stats you set. There will be online leaderboards, various enemy types, and you get to try ship setups of top scores.

I still don't hate my game, and I am 8 hours in already. That doesn't usually happen :). It's a good sign.

So far this Ludum Dare was pretty smooth. I got an idea, made it into a vision, which I made into a game. No major roadblocks or anything. It somehow turned out to be this bright firework-esque paintball madness with tanks and asteroids!

Plans for tommorow: playtesting, polishing, playtesting, implementing online highscores, playtesting, balancing and playtesting.

I however still don't have a name. One idea was Sinis Is Not In Space, but I don't know whether I like it.

I pushed my thing to a playable form finally. Now, I need to test whether my online features work. Select a level, set your ship stats, or click on a highscore to play with that person's stats. Explore different enemy types and try to push the highscore limits!

Play here: https://boltkey.cz/sinis/