Hey! Started making games in Python two weeks ago and figured I should give this a try. I can make the stuff move and the stuff happen!

Engine: Python 2.7
Graphics: Pyxeledit/Python
Audio: Microphone + Random objects in my room

Good luck and have fun everyone!

First day went pretty well for me. Started with some ideas and eventually made a prototype from scratch which I liked and knew was doable. Currently all the basic functionality like movement, collision, random object spawn and animations are done so tomorrow I can spend the whole day adding new obstacles and and setting the game pace.

Here is a gif where you can see my game! You simply press left and right to dodge objects and if you do well enough you will increase in size.

Tags: python

Hey everyone! The last two days I have been playing different Ludum Dare games and one thing that I noticed is that most games are made in either Unity or Java. I myself made a game using the Python library Pygame and I think I found only one other person using Python during LD34 so far. Since this is so uncommon I thought it would be nice to tell about my experience. (Note: I’m not a coding expert(Applied Physics student) so I could be wrong on some things!)

What I like about Pygame:

• Python is super easy! During Ludum Dare I instantly knew how to go from my idea to a prototype.

Code for dev mode I used to test different functions.  Simple!

• Pygame is well documented and there are a lot of great tutorials on Youtube. (Example)

What I don’t like about Pygame:

• Both easy and (mostly) hard to run on different OS. So on one hand Python code can run on almost anything but on the other hand it can be very difficult/confusing if you have to package the right library’s so non-Python users can play your game. For example I can’t make a mac version without using a mac computer. There also is no good way to run it in a browser. (As far is I know)
• For some things it feels like you have to do a lot of effort for something simple. With Pygame you can’t just simply create a camera or player with the library itself. You either have to script it yourself(And apply it’s effects manually to all objects that it affects) or copy paste another script. Compared to a friend of mine who used Unity I felt like it took way longer for me to get the basics down.
• Performance of Pygame games doesn’t seem to be all that great. It certainly is very playable but I can’t shake the feeling that the frame rate isn’t always consistent. Like somehow you can always feel like the pixels are changing position instead of a smooth movement. (+I think you need manual code to optimally use gpu and more cores? )

Conclusion:

Everything considered I’m happy that I used Python during Ludum Dare 34 since it gave me a lot more insight in the game making possibilities. I’m quite proud of the game I made and it has been getting mostly positive feedback. With that said though I will be switching over to Unity in the coming weeks.  I feel like Unity will allow me to work more on designing the game itself then the code that supports it. For a person who wants to make a game for the first time and also get a lot of coding experience I can recommend Python but for everyone else there are better options. (imo)

If you read all of this and you want to check out a Python game you can try mine 😉

Tags: pygame, python

I’m in for the second time! 😀 Last time I said that I wouldn’t use Python again but I haven’t had time to play much with Unity yet so I’ll be using Python again.

This time I’m bring some peeps with me to handle the music and art so I can go full force on the game. (And not ruin the framerate with a fancy overlay effect to cover up the pixelart :’) )

Hopefully I can learn some new things again and make something better than last time. I already found a few fun Python libraries to play around with so I’m very excited!

So I practically had everything ready to make a cool game in Python: fancy menu create script, ways to increase performance, pretty good custom player controller including physics and a bunch of other stuff. I had everything to make a great game but where is the fun in that? :p

So yesterday I deleted all that stuff and I’m currently setting up my Unity work space and trying to learn some new stuff before the theme is revealed. (I have like 5 hours of Unity experience) Pretty confident that I can at least make something similar in scope to my previous (and first) LD so I’ll probably be fine. So… anyone got some good Unity tutorials or tips for me? :p

Tags: unity

Not at all a fan of the theme so I've spent most of the morning cleaning the kitchen but hopefully I'll be able to make something fun now. :)

Will be using:

Unity Krita Spriter

We just uploaded our game Tol! A physics driven platforming game were you move a spinning top through obstacle courses with a ghost fan. Also I'm playing games now so leave your game in the comments and I will play it. :)

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/tol

You're the best! We've received so many great comments it's really heartwarming. Doing our best to do the same for everyone else. :)

If you haven't tried our game yet we hope you give it a go. We're really proud of it!

-> https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/tol <-

After two full days of work we've finished our game: How to Po. This is a game where you collect magic space apples while trying to not fall in the lava! We've had a really smooth jam this time and were able to put a lot of polish and care into this game!

Good luck to everyone who's still busy finishing their game!

You can play How to Po here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/how-to-po

Slept, did a workout and came up with an idea. I'll be making a compo game about the struggle of navigating a group of friends to a destination. Think human golf. How is everyone else doing?

The mockup:

How it's going:

Now I just need them to follow commands (badly) :)

"Everybody lets move this way!"

Hope I can make some fun levels tomorrow. :sunglasses:

I forgot how fast the time flies during compo. Hope I make it :sweat_smile: