I’ve been meaning to participate in this for years and every time there’s a reason or excuse not to. Well this time I’m in regardless! Even if the game I make is aweful I will at least have something to show for this! 😀 I’ll be using Unity and C# because that’s what I’m most familiar with.
Good luck to everyone on this jam! I look forward to playing the finished products!
It only took me an hour and a half… but I think I’ve settled on an idea for my game! Fingers crossed it turns out as cool as it is in my head! Good luck to everyone!
Right, so as the title says, the basic mechanics are mostly finished, There are some minor tweaks and things that can be added or changed down the line, but the fundamentals are there and mostly functioning the way I want them to.
I’m not certain what I want to do as far as graphics go to be honest… I might leave it as mostly squares, since my art skills are severely lacking. Only time will tell I suppose.
Anyways, the working premise I’m going with is a platformer where you are constantly moving forward at a constant speed. I’ve incorporated both themes. Two button controls one lets you jump the other toggles between growing and shrinking. The player can jump higher when they are tall, but needs to be small to fit many places.
Nothing fancy, but I like it so far for my first LD.
It’s about to be 6 AM here and I feel like I’m at a decent stopping place with my current progress.
Basic Mechanics are done (as long as I don’t break anything… later)
Currently it’s got no sound, and is just colored blocks, but that’s for tomorrow me to deal with 😀 I’d show you an image but it’s literally just a block on screen and some other blocks as platforms hah. I’ll show some progress when the visuals have made progress.
Anyways, goodnight everyone, and good luck to those currently working!
So generally I sleep for 10-14 hours and have to drag myself out of bed… Well I went to bed at 6 this morning and woke up at 11. And I don’t feel sleepy at all, this is amazing.
Good morning everyone! I’m getting back to work now.
Have a gif ^_^
Nothing special, no art yet, just colored blocks still.
Edit: How do I make the gif move in the post? haha I’m so new to this ^_^
Lol now what do I do!?
Stupid body, why you need sleep! I could have used the last six hours for awesomeness! 😛 lol
Now that I’m up there’s only 8 hours left, and the game is still just colored squares and has no sounds at all. I switched to an endless version so I don’t have to make levels, just some modules for the generator to place randomly. ALSO there’s now a score system! Complete with local high score as well.
Have a gif:
I recorded this bit before bed this morning, but my computer crashed while I was making it into a gif so I had to wait until now to post it. Also note that the speed is not accurate in the gif. It’s slower.
Goals for today are making music and more modules for more varied generation.
Good luck everyone! Keep up the hard work! ^_^
Little Big Dash is my entry to LD34.
I’m super happy to have a finished product at the end of this, as it’s my first time participating.
As this was my first Ludum Dare, this is my first Post-Mortem, So I hope I cover everything that people generally cover in this! ^_^ I was debating if I should even do one of these but I figure why not, right? So here goes.
Oh and here’s a timelapse if you’re interested!
What went wrong:
What went right:
Details of the Weekend:
So usually I miss ludum dare by a few weeks or sometimes just a few days, but this time I learned the date two weeks ahead of time, and posted notes and reminders to myself all over the place so I wouldn’t forget. At first I was excited, and warming up with my tools, and learning new tools just in case I decided to use them. Then as it got closer the wait got excruciating, I didn’t want to practice anymore I just wanted to get the theme and make something awesome. 😀 Well anyways the waiting was painful, but once the theme was announced I felt great!
I was pleasantly surprised how smoothly the weekend went. I started with a pretty strict time schedule, and I prepared meals ahead of time, because I figured it would be a mad dash and non-stop working once it started. But I was incredibly wrong. Perhaps that was because I had a pretty low bar to reach, my goal wasn’t to make a masterpiece, but to make something fully functional within the time frame. It would ideally have audio and graphics and solid gameplay. I didn’t really care if it was a great game, just that it was complete, and I must say I feel like I accomplished that pretty well.
I only allowed myself an hour and a half for planning and brain storming, because I wanted to have tons of time to work on the first night. The goal being to have some prototype ready before I went to sleep on night 1. That went well, and by the middle of Saturday I had pretty much finished most of the gameplay aspects and mainly had level design, graphics and audio remaining. I felt like I was doing well. Then I lost a lot of my motivation, I spent quite a few hours on Saturday evening watching streamers and I even watched a movie with my roommates.
When I got back to work, I did the basic audio loop for the game, and decided to leave the graphics as simple colors for multiple reasons, I didn’t know what else to make it, and the minimalism seemed to fit for the style of game I was making. Once that was done I slacked off again, returning to Twitch to check in on the progress some streamers were making.
I’m pretty sure I know why I slacked off so much, and at one point I even considered not finishing at all. It’s simple really, I chose to make a platformer, knowing that I don’t like playing platformers. I like them as games, but I’m terrible at them so once the functionality was implemented, and I was working on the level design I quickly got frustrated having to play test them constantly.
I didn’t get the level design finished until an hour or so before the deadline, and I ended up going with endless generation from premade modules rather than the initial idea of having completable levels. I decided this because I was having trouble coming up with ideas for the levels, and I didn’t think I had time for true procedural generation. Instead I just made 10 segments that the game randomly chooses from as the player progresses. It’s not the best, but each segment it completable and they’re long enough that you’re not likely to survive to see all 10. ^_^
Anyways I feel like I succeeded in my initial goal but I feel like I didn’t have enough faith in myself. I feel like I took the easy way out when I could have challenged myself to make something more complicated. Regardless though I’m glad I participated and I now have an idea for how to approach the next one.
Tags: compo timelapse, final timelapse, ld34, post-mortem, postmortem
All things permitting, I’m returning for LD38. There are no words to describe how excited I am! The last time I joined was in 2015 for LD34, and coincidentally that was my first time joining as well. I look forward to experiencing this wonderfully chaotic and rewarding event once again. It is long overdue.
^_^ I extend a friendly good luck to everyone who is participating this time around! ^_^
Going Relatively well so far I think. Initially this theme gave me some issues, it was one of the few I didn't already have a theme thought out for (of course :P) that's okay though, I'm happy with my progress so far. I hope everyone else is having a good Jam so far! ^_^
Time for a nom break and then back to work! :D
It's officially 6:00 AM and I'm exhausted lol... time for bed now, it's getting hard to concentrate. Good luck to those who are still at it, or just getting started!
So it's been a while since I participated in Ludum Dare, it's amazing to be back. My goals this time were to have a more complete/polished game than my last entry. I'd say I 100% accomplished that, even though it's still lacking in the graphics department.
What went right: Goals Achieved! My amazing boyfriend who kept me fed, hydrated, caffeinated, and motivated throughout the weekend. Game turned out better than I'd hoped, considering I wasn't fond of the theme.
What went wrong: My computer is acting up, has been for a while, so I'm honestly surprised it didn't implode on me this weekend. It did however decide that I didn't need internet on multiple occasions, forcing me to save and restart my entire computer. (Did I mention my computer is acting up?) Restarting takes ages lately... For some reason, chronolapse won't let me encode my screenshots into a timelapse video... >.<
Various bugs popped up, these were highly stressful and time wasting occurrences, but bound to happen of course.
I have participated twice in the past, the first time in LD34, and again in LD38. I'm so excited to be able to participate again this time around!
Darn life needs to quit getting in the way!
My tools: - Unity - Aseprite if 2d - Blender if 3d - Aural and Bosca Ceoil for music - Bfxr and ChipTone for sfx
OH and Chronolapse for a timelapse of the weekend! It's my favorite part, seeing the game come together at the end of it all!
A huge GOOD LUCK to everyone participating this time! :D
Is anyone else having SERIOUS trouble with the website logout bug? Literally I'm having to sign in every few seconds, every time I load a page, click a theme to vote, etc. It's driving me insane because this is one of the ONLY sites that will not remember my login, so I have to type the whole thing every time. I get the message that tells me it's a bug, and I know this site is still pretty new and being worked on, but is there any way to avoid this? It's driving me crazy!
I actually don't mind the majority of the themes that made it to the final round this time. There are of course a couple that I HIGHLY dislike, but for the most part, there's a decent selection! I voted pretty harshly based on my favorites though.
I have a burning feeling that one of the one's I dislike the most, will be the winner... since that is usually how it goes, but we will have to wait and see.
Looking forward to the event!
If you are looking for a great music generator for this LD, you should check out jukedeck.com! it's completely free to sign up and can be used in the browser, or through an api.
I'm very good at changing my sleeping schedule around on the fly, so to maximize my time working on LD, I've done that already. Went to bed at 7:00AM, and woke up at 3:30PM so that I'm awake and rested when the theme is announced! This also means that I won't lose as many hours to sleep during the Jam itself, which is always a plus. Every hour counts! ^_^
Excitement is high, I can't wait! Good luck to everyone!!
Every time Ludum Dare comes around, something comes up and I'm unable to participate. This time around I have a new job that gives me Friday-Sunday off every week, so I had no excuse not to join. Even my birthday didn't stop me, it just ate up some of my time, because I kept having company over and or visiting people. (That part was my own fault, I need to learn to say no lol) Overall, I would say I'm not thrilled with the results from this LD, but I am happy I had something at the end of the Compo.
What went wrong/ What I learned: - Don't wait until LD starting day to open Unity for the first time. - I need to practice more consistently, I haven't touched any code since my last LD which was 17 months ago! - SCOPE! Every time I learn this, and every time I still fail to reign it in!
What went right: - The voxel models for the buildings were exactly what I had in my head - The menu system actually worked out quite nicely, once I sorted out a MAJOR bug (self inflicted) - The game as a whole was coming together nicely, I just ran out of time (as usual)
For anyone who likes a good LD Timelapse, I'll be posting one soon. It's always awesome to watch the games come together!
You can check out my "not" game at the link below if you're interested! - https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/off-the-streets