The game is coming along well! All mechanics are in, and all we need to add is the level select screen and polish.

Polish meaning redoing all the art...

So, it seems that a vote count for games is now active. And wow, it's thrown me into a tizzy.

Typically, 20 votes are needed for a game to get ratings, which is reasonable. I had assumed, based on comments, that I had enough. But now that the vote count is visible, it seems that was incorrect.

In previous LDs, I'd got around 50 votes with around 10 comments. So, about 20% of voters left a comment. For this LD, I've gotten 15 comments and 15 votes (cough save our ratings cough). So it seems that new new system of encouraging comments is working well. But this mislead me into thinking my efforts were enough.

Another question is how coolness is calculated now. Since it's not displayed, it's hard to figure out how much effort is needed to get a game to the top. I feel that I've rated a similar number to previous years, but have gotten way fewer votes. I'm not certain how having a team factors into this, but my team members haven't been rating at all.

Anyone else notice anything similar?

My team and I are in again for Ludum Dare 39. The team is much larger than the old game page implies, most of my five teammates didn't bother to sign up for an account. Maybe I'll convince them this time.

I'll be using my own cobblestone engine once again, in IntelliJ IDEA. For art, we'll use Photoshop, Gimp, Krita, GraphicsGale and Paint.NET depending on who's doing what, and on what OS. Music will mostly be done in FL Studio.

To prepare hype, I've made this wallpaper:

Have fun, and good luck!

Basic gameplayer is finally finished! We're going for a sidescrolling combat game. You play as a powerful mage, but if you run out of mana you'll easily be overcome.

Gameplay: https://gfycat.com/DisfiguredAstonishingGalapagoshawk

We've got a ton to do tomorrow, mostly new enemy types and level design. Luckily, I used an entity component system this time around, so they're relatively easy to program. Art and sound may be the issue.

This will be the team's 7th participation in Ludum Dare. We've recruited several artists who should bring our art style up a ton. Our engine has been expanded to support cool lighting effects. Hopefully, we can finally eclipse our composer with these graphics.

Tools: - Custom cobblestone game framework, Dart, and IntelliJ IDEA - FL Studio, Audacity - Krita, Gimp, Photoshop, Paint.net, and any other graphics program someone happens to like

Progress can be view in the Git repository on Gitlab. Because of it's free continuous integration, the game can also be played at any point during the weekend here.

Per tradition, here's a wallpaper

As is my tradition (when I remember), I've gathered some of my favorite games I played during this jam. None of these are perfect by any means, but they were all interesting enough in some way that I thought I should showcase them.

Crystal Library

This game pegs itself as a horror roguelike. Players must search for books in a library guarded by crystal "librarians" who in turn search for the player. The combination of the random generation and stealth mechanics was interesting, and it gave me quite the adrenaline rush to hide behind shelves as the librarians passed. It could use a bit of work selling the horror mood, but it's quite fun as is.

Darkade

Another horror game, this time mixed with breakout. Though the gameplay was fairly annoying (involving hitting specific points with a bounce), this game truly made me feel fear. The retro aesthetic was spot on, and the simulated glitches felt authentic. The chiptune music is just off enough to feel frightening. This game brought out the mood.

As Vast as the Sea

I don't really like VNs, and this one didn't change that much. The writing style set it somewhat apart from the few others I've played. It's listed here, however, because of how well it sold the undersea mood. The music was relaxing and oceanic, and the backdrops were beautiful. Check it out just for that.

Dungeon Solitaire

In Dungeon Solitaire, players must play all the cards in their deck, with each having an effect on the challenges they must navigate. This game had some of the most unique gameplay I've seen, and it stood out among the many card/something games submitted. With some more expansion on its idea and a stronger aesthetic (maybe something like Hand of Fate?), I'd pay for this.

I hope you've found some of these interesting.

This will be the teams 8th time participating; the number varies for each member.

Tools:

• cobblestone, my custom game engine written in Dart
• IntelliJ IDEA
• FL Studio and Audacity
• Krita, Gimp, Photoshop, Paint.net, or whatever other image editor might be useful

You can view our code in this repository and even play the game during the weekend here thanks to Gitlab's Continuous Integration. For now, enjoy the classic NeHe texture there.

This aesthetic helps you reminisce on the old days gone by when not every post was a complaint about the theme.

Pardon the flat white textures, but the core idea of our game is in.

Essentially, it's a top-down shooter, but when you hit a wall part of the ceiling collapses, slowly running the player out of space to avoid enemy attacks.

If you missed the last post, our game is a shooter/bullet hell where hitting a wall causes part of the ceiling to collapse, slowly running the player out of space to avoid enemy attacks.

All the enemy bullet patterns are programmed in. The player has been given a roll ability. Blocking off a section now collapses that whole section.

The art team already has sketches and a few sprites ready. Tomorrow, I'll try to add those in, add the music in, and polish the UI into something presentable. I may even have time for a bit of screen shake and/or lighting.

Monday should leave plenty of time for playtesting and iterating.

The ninth game from this team, here it goes again.

Tools:

• cobblestone, my custom game engine written in Dart. Now featuring particles!
• IntelliJ IDEA
• FL Studio and Audacity
• Krita, Gimp, Photoshop, Paint.net, everyone gets an image editor.

We've got a basic repository for the game up here already. The "game" can even be played here thanks to GitLab's CI. For now, enjoy a nice spinning dev texture.

And now the promised wallpaper, 3840x2160.

Making a tile-locked platformer where the player escapes some kind of horror. They can find upgrades, but they'll make the player go mad.

I spent most of the day yesterday making these covers, ranging from our first ever creation for LD32 to our latest entry for LD44, Library of Madness. Our graphics have definitely improved over time, but I still managed to compose something with the older assets.

We really have made a lot of games now; I never could have done so much without the motivation of Ludum Dare.

One of the main graphical features in our game Library of Madness is a wave effect that is applied to the screen as the main character spends their sanity to gain access to powerups.

Here's an example after the player has lost 5 sanity.

This is accomplished using a fairly simple vertex shader. (omitting colors, texture coords, etc.)

glsl void main() { vec3 newPos = vec3( aVertexPosition.x + waveData.y * sin(waveData.x + aVertexPosition.x + aVertexPosition.y), aVertexPosition.y + waveData.y * cos(waveData.x + aVertexPosition.x + aVertexPosition.y), aVertexPosition.z ); gl_Position = uPMatrix * vec4(newPos, 1.0); }

waveData here is a uniform vec2 where x represents the current time, and y the amplitude of the wave. In our game, this amplitude is a function of the amount of sanity the player has lost equal to 0.5 * pow(insanity, 1.5).

This technique was copied from the water effect in this video, which used to have a tutorial to go with it.

It looks very different in our game because we apply the effect to the screen (i.e. an FBO that the game is initially rendered to) rather than the individual tiles. This results in one continuous twist, without multiples waves visible.

As a final detail to prevent uncovered area, the screen FBO is drawn eight extra times, flipped around the central screen. This isn't typically very noticeable, but could technically result in the player being visible twice on screen, if insanity was high enough and they were close enough to the edge of the map.

That's it! I hope you learned something or found this technique interesting.

Messed around with fluid simulation in Blender; turned out pretty well! I'm a big fan of the liquid material I came up with, though the fluid geometry is a bit angular in places.

My team is in again with our Dart game engine, cobblestone. I'm excited to see what we can make this go around!

Tools to be used: - IntelliJ IDEA - FL Studio - Tiled - Some mishmash of art tools

See you all Friday.

Rolling with the ASCII art this time; I've got a few tricks to pull with it though.

There are 5 more to go, but I've made a pretty good framework off of this. I love how the explosion effect is looking.

Beware the snowmen.