This is a question I’ve been asking myself ever since the clock started ticking down, and to be honest, I don’t know. I’ve known for a while that I’ll be away from my computer for a day, so in essence I’ll be competing in the jam with less time than in the compo. I may not be able to get a finished game, but if I do, I’ll be using either GIMP and Gamemaker Studio Standard, or Blender and Unity (free version, scripting in C#). Regardless, voting has been fun, and good luck to all of you with Ludum Dare 31!

All hail the completely professional looking design document!!!

Basically, I was lying awake after the theme had been announced, and as I was drifting off to sleep, I thought, just because the game must take place on one screen doesn’t mean it needs to be a static screen. So my idea is a topdown RPGesque game where the playing field evolves as you play.

I spent my day before I was gone working on stone and grass textures, but I have to leave the roof texture as-is so I can get on to the gameplay. Unfortunately, Game Maker’s room editor is not up to what I need, so I have to make my own room editor. We’ll see if I can get that done in time… Regardless, whether I do or don’t make an entry, I want to think the LD community for letting me get more experience in Game Maker: Studio and game design in general. Best of luck to all of us!

I’m in. Or I was in. Whatever. This is confusing!

My idea is a blatant ripoff of RPG tropes, although many of them are somewhat reversed. As such, it may be hard to take seriously. However, the music went really well. It’s tense, and keeps the game off-putting instead of full-on humorous. I also like the art style, but I did have to rush some of the art at the end – beginning? – whatever. I should have put more effort into all of it. The gameplay isn’t very innovative, but that wasn’t my goal, though maybe it should have been. My goal was for the player to both chuckle, and ask “What the heck is going on here?”. I believe it accomplishes that goal well.

Did I do that right? This is my first post-mortem ever, and I haven’t made any finished games yet. This is confusing! Well, I’m out. In. Whatever.

1920 x 1080
1600 x 900
1280 x 720

There’s quite a story behind this one. I used wordle.net to generate a word cloud from the text of the “About Ludum Dare” and the “Rules and Guide” pages. [Unfortunately, I used a very small size for the image, so it became blurry when I scaled it up.] I did a few manual changes:

• Removed the word “game” as it was bigger than both “Ludum” and “Dare”, and that just didn’t look right.
• Recolored it until “Ludum” and “Dare” were in about the same colors as the current logo.
• Rearranged it so it clearly said “Ludum Dare” and not “Dare Ludum”.

At this point, I started to realize it was looking a bit like an ocarina, and… yeah.

Sadly, I forgot to increase the width before making the ocarina outline… so that’s why there are seams. I kind of like that effect, though… hopefully it’s not too ugly.

I have two formats I want to work with, and two jams, so that lines up perfectly. I’ll decide which one I want to do for which when this MiniLD starts.

2 or 2.5D:
Artwork and tilesets: GIMP
Level design: Tiled Map Editor [Thanks for bringing this to my attention! If I’d had this last LD, I probably could have made a game instead of making a failed JSON parser to initialize my levels!]
Engine: GameMaker: Studio – Standard [and Tiled2GM to bridge the gap]

3D:
Models: Blender and default cubes
Textures, excessive “billboards”, and GUI artwork: GIMP
Engine: Unity 5

So far I’ve got a working product, but it’s not quite where I’d like it to be. Unfortunately, I’m a bit burnt out. I think I can afford that in a MiniLD, but just for future reference, what’s the best thing to do if you get burnt out? Is it normal? How do you get back to whatever you were doing?

Here’s my game, Containem-3, by the way. The paddles are generated procedurally in a yet-to-be-made options menu, letting the player control their difficulty. It’s not completely new, though; it’s basically the evolved version of my original (neither procedural nor 3-D) Containem from several years back:

I still need to add the score, and some particles and music that the original version had during a paddle collision, but I’d say it’s pretty complete. Of course, I’d like to add more, but as I said earlier, I feel a bit burnt out. Any advice on that?

I’m sick of the “I’m in” posts, and I’m also sick of the people trying to be clever with their “I’m in” posts, but I’m less sick of that latter group, so I’m joining it.

Tools:

• Unity3d, but with a hint of 2D… I’ll find out exactly how when the theme’s announced.
• C Hashtag for coding (It’s a good thing it’s not really called that, isn’t it? It sounds really, really stupid.)
• GIMP for sprites/textures/whatever
• Blender [+ possibly a bit of Sketchup] for modeling
• Clarinet for composing (an actual clarinet, that’s not the name of software or anything)
• Magix Music Maker for sound editing/mixing/generating
• BFXR? Maybe?

I’ll be gone for quite a bit of the first day, but I’m determined to have a final product this time around – perhaps not a great product, but something at least.

I decided to make a 3d game with 2d sprites. This required two things:

• Sprites leaving proper shadows forward/backward
• Invisible planes for sideways shadows [for added depth]

With a built-in shader and a custom shader, I’m able to do both.

My take on the theme was “words as a weapon”, so my main character had to be a writer. Of course, this called for the game to be a sidescrolling kung fu beat ’em up game because… I don’t know why. But I used Unity3D so I could do cooler lighting. With an extra dimension, I was able to combine it with a sidescrolling 2D platformer, resulting in… I suppose you’d call it just a sidescroller? Once I have levels designed, of course… right now, I’m still tweaking movement.

If that gif isn’t animated, click on it.

I figured I’d work on my GIMP skills a bit before getting into the thick of the jam. Last time around, I made an ocarina from the About page. This time, I made a spaceship from an edited version of the LD twitter feed, and added some lasers and blur and Galaga stars and all that cool stuff. So here’s the wallpaper!

720 * 1280

1080 * 1920

As far as my actual game, which won’t be looking near as good, I’ll be using

• Godot Engine
• GIMP for graphics
• MuseScore for music

…and whatever else I think I might need.

Somehow, with all the stress, I’ve forgotten that LD36 was happening this weekend. Which is silly, because I voted all the way to rounds 3 and 4.

I swear, I’ll actually make a game for Ludum Dare someday.

I think we’ve all gotten sick of the “Backwards” sort of suggestions, which are ironically probably the most common thing in the slaughter. And we’re sick of suggestions that are too meta.

I’m sorry if you see “Reversing the “Reversing the Paradigm” Paradigm” once the theme slaughter starts. That’s entirely my fault. Also Snowkittens.

Am I in? I don’t know. I’ve thought I was in for a lot of Ludum Dares but it’s never panned out. This time, I’m going to make a game before so I don’t have to relearn my engine of choice the day of.

I’ve run into slight lag issues with the theme slaughter, so sometimes I think I haven’t clicked so I try clicking again. It then takes that extra click and applies it to the next one. So I’ve accidentally given themes I thought were pretty awful “Yes” ratings after it catches up, and then there’s no way to change it. I imagine there will be enough people participating to run down these themes, but it’s a bit annoying.

I’m camping during the LD weekend with some friends. It was too late to cancel. But I really wanted to participate in this LD, and I don’t have a laptop, so I’m doing something crazy. I’m going to try to program a quick game on my phone. I programmed a rough Pong clone earlier, so it’s definitely possible.

If I can get something done this time, obviously I should have been using my phone for gamedev all along 😛

IDE: Microsoft Touch Develop
Engine: game board
Libraries: I’ve created a few random [number] utility functions for my Pong clone that I plan to use as a base. In the Ludum Dare spirit I’ll package all my utility functions in a nice shared library, not that anyone else will probably ever use it.
Art: Pixly
Sound/Music – ??? – I have a music composition app with playback (Ensemble Composer), I might try to record the sound from it. I suppose any suggestions here would be appreciated.

I’m trying to create a dungeon crawler located entirely in an elevator that moves down for each new level. It’s programmed in a 2D engine, though, so I spent most of my time working on the [completely untested] projection. I feel I can’t test until I have a working player sprite, but before that I need steering behaviors [and isn’t great that there’s no premade library in my language?], and…

I considered forgetting about this and doing a completely new game, but the sunk-cost fallacy sounds pretty good right now. I can only hope that it does get easier now that I have a base – and now that I can once again be on my computer in my home instead of on my phone in a loud cabin.