>>be me

>>planned on doing ludum dare

>>book leave from work to accomodate

>>global pandemic occurs

>>"it'll be fine!"

>>day of the jam, look up theme

>>"this is the year that i'll complete a game! it'll be fun!"

>>suddenly no wifi

>>"heh, no worries i'll work offline till it comes back

>>suddenly no electricity in the house

>>no electricity in the whole street

>>mfw i planned everything only for everything to go wrong

sigh I'll have to make do, guess i'll be writing the dirtiest of code :/

currently can move around and pickup items. where i go from here is anyone's guess

So sleeping late last night was a baaaad idea. Woke up late and felt really woozy.... Looks like an early night for me tonight.

Making some, albeit little progress but it's progress nonetheless. I didn't expect to pull out anything amazing since I am solo and can't do graphics or sound.

Implemented items and ghost spawning. You can now pick up and deliver those items!

What I have left: * npc behaviour * implement and lose state * add menu * implement basic scoring system * add animated player sprite * add tilemap bacground of some kind * add basic sounds * work on screenshots for splashpage

a little lessons learned log on current progress, for myself should I decided to do this again in the future: * Make sure to clear up other priorities before commiting to this * Always get a good night sleep; staying up all night isn't worth it anymore irregardless of the reason * It took time to find relevant assets, and they're still not exactly fit for purpose. Finding sprites of miscellaneous object took longer than it should have. After this jam I should consider learning how to make sprite art. Audio will have to be done (unfortunately) later. * The jam isn't long, the time allocated is even less than what you get for project irl. Expect games to have the simplest of loops. If fact, the simpler the better and then break down every single task - I generally work better if I can see a list of things to do * Struggled quite a bit trying to place interables within player's viewing frustrum. Current implementation is a hack, need to look into it more in future

Right, time to finish this and return to some normality.

My submission: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/$181070

It's not good, and it'll probably crash, but what can I expect to do with 4 days (mind you probably less for me since I had some trouble in the beginning). I came into this with the goal of finishing a game jam, and I think I can say that I have.

I knew this was going to be tough, especially doing this solo. It has highlighted how just being a programmer isn't enough to make a polished game. I think I'll start dabbling into some pixel art and learn a few things. Likewise with sound, can't hurt to try.

I've enjoyed the experience... Okay, maybe everything except the bugs creeping up in the last hour. Good luck to all the other participants, I'll try to do and be better next time!

Always feeling nervous with these kinds of events. Anyway, I just wanted to make a post (more of a reminder to myself) of stuff I want to do differently for this jam.

1) Write up a blog post before heading off to bed. I completely forgot to do this for LD47. Since I'm only doing the jam rather than the comp, I should have enough to do a small write up. I've set up a folder as well as text files with some template text for game controls, descriptions, attributions etc. so I don't waste time on small busy-work stuff. The LD comp is too time restrictive, and coming up with a game loop is already hard enough.

2) Speaking of game loops, focus on doing one game loop regardless how simple it appears. Something I'd liked about LD47 was that I was relatively chill about it.

3) REMEMBER to play other people's entries. I'll admit I feel a bit bad not doing this for the past two Ludum Dares. I'd like to change that starting with this jam.

First day report. Honestly don't feel like doing this jam m partly to do with that fact that the theme is difficult; off the top of my head I can only think of mining, diving and some avant garde stuff about sleeping or conciousness. It's no surprise that everyone else is thinking the same thing (which has to mean that we're all on the right track though, right?)

* Stuff I've done so far: *

Anyway I decided to settle with just a simple diving game. The objective is to go as deep as you can. I've "attempted" to do my own sprite for the player:

I plan on having a timer that repeatedly ticks at set intevals, which will trigger an event to enable a slider-catch-thingy minigame (I don't know what they're called but it's that active reload thing from Gears of War).

I've also managed to code the slider-thingy to use an AnimationCurve. I'm thinking about having an array of these curves and then randomly selecting one as you dive further down.

* Stuff that needs to be done (in no particular order): *

• Game Background
• Point scoring/ tracking
• Game and menu state
• Incrementing difficulty somehow
• Sounds (music if possible)
• Lung capacity/ holding your breath
• Write of instructions
• Set up page to host game in

There's a lot of things to do, too many things. I just want to sleep 🤦‍♂️

Not gonna lie, I don't think I'll make in time to submit this entry. Just finding it hard to concentrate this year's challenge. Anyway I'll try to push on ahead, it might mean that I'll miss the deadline.

Current state of the game:

What I was able to do today: - Adjust the timing of my breath slider so it appears and fades away when needed. It's based on a timer but the timer doesn't reset once it's been triggered - Made another sprite for when the player fails the breath minigame. Having trouble with getting it to animate - Added placeholder UI for the player's breath (lungs); the idea is that if the player fails the breath minigame that they lose a breath count (tbh you can think of it like a health counter) - I've added sounds for when the player wins or loses the breath mini game. - Tweaked the particle system so that it triggers when the player fails the breath minigame; this is what took most of my time just trying to get the thing to look right. The "looping" property gave me grief all this time 🤦‍♂️

Screenshots of sprites: I'm pretty chuffed how the lungs sprites turned out, it's not something I do a lot of.

Finally, I was going to post this last night but figured it would be better if I added here instead: I've attempted to make my own music for this game. Take that with a huge pinch of salt, it's only a simple chord progression, so the idea is that I'll have something a bit atmospheric being played on loop as background music. However, I've never produced music in any capcity (unless you count the music lessons in high school) so I can't make anything too complex at my current skill. I spent 3~4 month, prior to this game jam, racking my head trying to learn what chord progressions are. I swear, trying to learn music is like learning another language; everyone talking about scales, triads, fourths, it's like I'm learning how to program all over again!

* Stuff that needs to be done (in no particular order): *

• Game Background
• Point scoring/ tracking
• Game and menu state
• Incrementing difficulty somehow
• Lung capacity/ holding your breath
• Write of instructions
• Set up page to host game in
• fix hurt animation that's currently not being played

Oh man, there's still so much left to do :/

Here's my entry: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/ludum-dare-48-deep-dive

Itch.io page: https://justachimp.itch.io/ld48-deep-dive

This Ludum Dare has been a real stuggle. I've metioned in the post already why, but overall I'm just happy that I managed to post something in time. Anyway, I've set out 3 objective for myself before LD48 has started:

• Write a blog post before I end the day
• Make a simple game loop
• Play other people's games

I'm happy to report that I've done 2 out of the 3. I'll rest up a bit now and do the last one later, after a couple days of rest. For future game jams, I'll try to push myself a bit more to come up with a slightly more interesting game loop, if the theme and time permits. From the games I'm that seeing that are being published, I'm a bit embarrased with my entry >.<

I wish the best of luck to all participants, and hope you've all enjoyed the jam. Try to take it easy, you deserve a rest 👍