First Ludum Dare hype! Best of luck to everyone and may the best game win :trophy:

Development Tools

Programming Language: Java

Framework: LibGDX

Graphics: Photoshop CC 2015

Audio: Ableton Live and Audacity

IDE: Intellij

1 and a half hours to go. Hype!

If you feel like following my progress for whatever reason I'll be posting on Twitter every few hours throughout the jam with screenshots and some juicy progress pics.

I'll also be hosting my code on Github so you can see the actual source code if you so feel like it.

For now you can have a nice pic of my setup:

Gonna be doing some streaming on Twitch. If you're in the mood to watch me develop to random EDM tracks I found on Spotify then you can watch!

After the first 13.5 hours of the jam, I finally finished the basic prototype for my game. Time to spend the rest of the 48 hours on polish :unamused:

Here's some screenshots or something if you all want to see.

A placeholder title screen

The actual game

Placeholder game over screen

Bonus picture!: Java Runtime errors are fun!

After all, what good game doesn't have a splash screen on startup?

After all, what good game doesn't have a splash screen?

Every game needs a good looking main menu. After all, it's the first thing a player is going to see.

However, what's a main menu without it's matching game over screen?

I know you guys are all probably busy on your own games which is understandable, however if you have the time I'd love if you could try out my game and give me feedback.

Download

First of all, let me just say that Ludum Dare has been a blast. I've enjoyed not only making my own game faster than I've ever made one before (the last game I made took 4 months to complete and was much worse than this one). After just 24 hours, I'm almost done! With 22 hours left to go at the time of this post I'm fully prepared to have an amazing game to submit tomorrow night!

It's also been amazing watching everyone else's progress. I've seen some amazing projects both here and on Discord and I can't wait to play them. Whenever I'm not working on my game I've either on here or on Discord looking at everyone else's progress.

At this point I already have a very playable and fairly polished game that I'd possibly be ready for release. That's where you come in. If you're able to I'd love if you could download the most recent build of my game and find bugs, give feedback, or feature suggestions. Download Link

Tomorrow I'll try to implement as much suggestions as I can to make something that's truly amazing. I also want to polish up the graphics and sound design a bit.

This community is amazing and I can't wait to see what games everyone made and I'll be sure to play and rate as many as I can!

If you want the source code for my game is available on Github

GL on this final day!

~ Exedo

In the past 24 hours my game's graphics have improved immensely. Firstly we have:

While the graphics aren't terrible. They're extremely rudimentary. They almost look like something from the Atari 2600. I'm not dissing the retro-ish graphics in any way, I can do better. The first part was improving the god-awful player sprite and batteries (the batteries look more like watter bottles ffs).

Our updated player and batteries look much better. Our player looks more like a robot and less like a meaningless rectangle and our batteries look like, well, batteries!

But something was still bugging me about the map, so I updated my tileset. The first idea I had was a tiled floor which I did with a grid.

What was I thinking. With a grid it looked terrible. This won't do at all. Readers with a keen eye may have also noticed the font of the HUD changed. I changed it from LibGDX's default Arial to Roboto, a font I like a lot better and just looks nicer than Arial. However that map is just hideous.

So we bring ourselves to the latest graphics. The grid is gone and replaced with a solid floor. In the end I went from wanting to change my tileset entirely to changing it only slightly (really only changed the floor color and added the black in the corners to accent the walls), but yet it looks so much better than the previous placeholder graphics. I'm fairly pleased with these graphics and the batteries, player, and map look so much better than I thought they would. Tomorrow I'll probably polish up the textures to really push them over the edge and make the beautiful.

My games has power ups and their spawning is controlled by a random number generator (one separate one for each power up).

First time I run to ensure the newest power up I added worked properly, two power ups spawned the exact frame. Naturally I assumed it was a bug causing the two RNG's to create the same number.

I spent 20 minutes trying to figure out what was causing it.

Turns out it was just a statistical anomaly where both RNG's happened to generate the exact same number.

Spooked me for a bit.

Well Ludum Dare's 48 hours have passed and we've entered the judging period. I have to say the feedback has been great and I really appreciate it all.

What is recharged?

Recharged is a game where you play as a robot who is constantly running low on power. He needs your help collecting batteries to keep his fuel up so he can keep chugging along!

Along the way you’ll be able to pick up one of three power-ups. The solar panel which allows you to periodically generate your own power, the gas can which increases your maximum fuel capacity, and the efficiency drive which decreases the rate you lose fuel.

Tools used

The game was written in Java with the LibGDX framework. I planned to use IntelliJ as my IDE but it was acting up so I used Android Studio instead (they're basically the same IDE anyways). The art was created using both Photoshop for menu screens and Piskel for the sprites. Finally the music and sounds were created using Ableton Live and Audacity.

What went right?

The idea

I was planning to spend upwards to an hour after the theme was announced to figure out an idea but luckily I didn't need that. It took around 15-20 minutes to come up with an idea that I found interesting and was able to spend more of the time actually programming and less about having to brainstorm ideas. I also was able to ensure my scope was small and didn't bite off more than I could chew meaning I could have a completed game by the end of the 48 hours.

Responsive controls

The controls feel very responsive and solid. I was able to get the controls down rather quickly in the initial prototype which was good because it meant I didn't have to deal with polishing up messy controls later. In my opinion it's kind of rigid with only 4 directional movement and it'd be more fluid with omni-directional movement but I'm very satisified with the controls.

The art

This may sound surprising seeing as the graphics aren't anything to write home about and they're rather simplistic but I'm still proud of them. I'm definitely not an artist so the fact I got some good looking sprites was better than I was hoping for. I'm especially proud of the battery and gas can sprites.

The sounds

Almost every review so far has acknowledged the sound effects for the game are very well done. Originally I was planning for a more chiptune sound design but it was simply annoying to listen to so I later decided against it and I'm rather proud of it. The sounds weren't too difficult to make (the battery sounds are just little bell jingles and the music is a simple 4 bar loop) but they definitely make the game better and so I'm rather proud of that. The sort of last minute robot dialogue also adds a bit of character to the game which is nice.

What could have been better?

The difficulty

I've received some feedback saying the game is too simple which I can agree with. All that you can do is walk around collecting batteries and there isn't much challenge. This means that when the player loses they don't feel they lost because they handled a situation wrong, but because there was nothing they could do.

The battery spawns

Right now the batteries just spawn randomly after a certain amount of time (starting at once per second and moving to once every 3.5 seconds). I've noticed that even with all 3 power-ups after around 2 minutes the batteries spawn too infrequently that you just auto-lose (haven't heard of anyone reaching more than that yet). This should be fixed so that a player can last more than 2 minutes without autolosing.

The power-ups

Not gonna lie, the power-ups were a last minute idea I had on Saturday night and I didn't have much time to think that through or balance them. First off the actual power ups themselves (besides the solar panel) don't make much sense. How does a gas can increase the fuel capacity of a robot that uses batteries and how does a microchip increase it's fuel efficiency? The power ups themselves don't really make a noticeable impact. The gas can is completely useless, the solar panel's generation is so little it's irrelevant and the efficiency drive doesn't increase your efficiency enough to be noticeable. Earlier on they were stronger which I nerfed but I ended up nerfing them too hard. If I had more time I definitely would have balanced them better.

The player sprite

The player sprite was rushed with like 20 minutes left in the compo and looks like garbage.

Closing Remarks

Despite this being my first Ludum Dare and the second game I ever created I feel like I put out a solid game. My last game was a buggy piece of crap that took 3 months to make whereas this game is relatively good despite being made in only 48 hours. There are many things I'd improve on:

• Add some type of enemy or something that adds difficulty to make it more engaging to the player.
• Change the controls to be omni-directional and possibly add controller support.
• Make the sprites better and add animation
• Change how the batteries spawn so they spawn more common and not just completely random locations.
• Make the power-ups more relevant and not feeling completely useless.

All in all I'm rather proud of myself and this game. If you have yet to try out Recharged you can play it here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/recharged

I want to rate more games. If you have any games for me to rate then be sure to drop a link in the comments. If you want you can also rate my game

I've finally got around to creating the post-compo version of my entry (Recharged). I've gotten some great feedback and it's time to put it to work!

Upcoming Features

While the basic game is already created. There are some features I'm planning on adding.

• Mobile and possibly web support
• Controller support
• New upgrades
• Challenge of some kind
• Leaderboards (cross-platform)
• Achievements

Changes

There are also a few changes that need to be made in my opinion.

• Updated graphics
• Improvement of some sound effects
• Huge changes to current upgrades
• More maps
• Better looking HUD

I'll be sure to update people with more detail about the new changes and features in the future!

This is a repost from the devblog here

Currently Recharged’s only control scheme was with a keyboard. While this was fine at first, the game’s needs have evolved since then.

Firstly, having just keyboard input meant porting to mobile (Android and iOS) would be impossible. Someone playing on a phone can’t use a keyboard to play. Enter the on-screen controller. Right now it’s a simple quad-directional d-pad but it get’s the job done. Here’s what it currently looks like (Looks will definitely change in final versions)

(Ignore the debug lines around the player and batteries)

The on-screen controller wasn’t too hard to implement, it just checks if any of the buttons have been hit and moves the player accordingly. With this it means that porting the game to mobile is just about complete.

I also wanted to give the game support for controllers. It wasn’t necessarily needed but it was just something I wanted to add.

Adding support proved a bit harder than expected, seeing as I’ve never used LibGDX’s Controller library before. Unfortunately LibGDX doesn’t support the Xbox controller (the first controller I’ve added support for) out of the box, luckily the internet came to the rescue. I was able to come across this thread which contained the Xbox 360 controller mappings (The Xbox One and 360 controllers have the same mappings on PC). Adding those into a class allowed me the ability to easily access any of the controller’s buttons. After that it was a simple matter of polling which button (or analog stick) was hit and perform the appropriate action.

As of now the game now has keyboard/mouse, controller, and touchscreen controls. Right now the only supported controllers are the Xbox 360 controller and Xbox One controller (as I mentioned before they have the same key mappings). I’m hoping to add Playstation controller support if I can get my hands on one.

I came into Ludum Dare with pretty much no experience. The only game I had made prior was a little multiplayer top down shooter. It took 3 months to make, the code is terrible, and it's extremely buggy.

I wasn't expecting to gain very many if any ratings, so I'm glad I was able to reach above 20.

While my scores weren't the greatest, I still did alright in my opinion and better than I thought I would.

I was hoping for a top 50% finish but unfortunately that wasn't the case (I'm in the around top 60% if my math is right).

My proudest accomplishment is the top 100 finish in audio. I'm actually surprised that the audio was the best part of the game because it took me maybe half in hour in Ableton at most.

I've gotten some really great feedback and made a post-mortem going into details about what I should have done better and what went well.

Right now it's time to set my sights towards December. Ludum Dare 40 here I come!

With 3 weeks to go until Ludum Dare and my second LD we got to get some great theme suggestions in.

Personally I won't be upset over whatever theme we end up getting. The themes I suggested were.

1: Surrealism

2: The Final Battle

3: Light and Dark.

So I managed to luck out in that this weekend is the only free weekend I have in December so I should be able to participate.

Tools:

Game Engine/Language: I'll use either Java with LibGDX for 2D or Unity for 3D.

Graphics: Photoshop, Piskel (if 2D), Blender (if 3D).

Audio: Ableton Live 9.

Goals:

Last Ludum Dare I did what I'd consider alright for my first jam but it wasn't the greatest. Audio was definitely my strongest point (ended up top 100 in audio) so I don't feel I have to worry too much about that. I definitely feel that I should focus this Ludum Dare more on graphics and fun because those were the one's my previous game did terribly in. This time I definitely want to have better graphics than the garbage pixel art I had last time and my game wasn't all that fun so I want a more fun game this time.

What would you recommend as a good time-lapse tool?

idk I made this in like 5 min