This is pretty much my first LD. I attempted a Ludum Dare 30 (connected worlds) but never finished the game on time. I also submitted for MiniLD #58, but that was different. This time, I’ll be using:
Language: C#
Engine: I’m hoping to finish up my neon engine by the weekend, but otherwise I’ll use Unity
Editor: Visual Studio 2013 (if I finish neon), otherwise Mono for Unity
Hosted: GitHub (matthewd673)
Art: Paint.NET, maybe Blender
Sound: Audacity
Progress is going good on my first L.D game. Yes, its supposed to be that dark, and yes, that is a gun of sorts. I’m using Unity 5 for the first time in ages (I went through an Unreal Engine phase) so I’m still getting used to things.
Well, when I hit Fire 1 a point light and particle effect appears at my feet. So maybe it isn’t REALLY shooting light – but its getting there!
When the gun is shown in bright enough light some cool designs show up on around the edge. This is all it takes to get me excited.
Well the light bullet system took me way to long to figure out but I remain optimistic! Going to stop for lunch now:
The bullet system. Bullets are destroyed after being alive for 10 seconds.
After lunch and a walk I touched up my bullet system to fire a combination of particle effect and point light out of the gun. The game is taking shape!
I should mention that each bullet comes with quite a few white dots floating around it, so each dot you see is not a bullet
Alters glow brighter and longer than the bullets alone and lighting them will be a core mechanic of the game. They are done (minus art, like everything else)!
I’ve found that if you go under Effects | Noise | Add Noise and turn the first two bars down a lot you can add some interesting variation to your pixel art. Not very retro feeling but still pretty cool, just wanted to share my findings!
All I did was light the alter over and over and over and over again.
Take a gander at those bea-yoo-tiful textures! There are also columns, not pictured here.
After dinner I’ve finished the whole setting enemies on fire thing but the enemies don’t move yet, oh well. At any rate, I did get alters to look better – you now light the top of it rather than the whole thing, probably safer. 
Considering a design like this for my enemies. I want them to be kind of forlorn and dejected looking. That happy face looking thing will be a protruding nose – he isn’t smiling. On an unrelated note my working name for this game has been Weapons of Mass Illumination, but I’m not too happy with it. Any thoughts?
*sigh*
Welp, the compo ends in 6 hours and I have one level done. However – almost everything else is done 
Anyway, while I enter panic mode you can have this screenshot from level 1. Level 1 only has alters in an attempt to ease the player into the experience. I’m also streaming at www.twitch.tv/fizz55 so check that out too. OMIGOSH I FORGOT TO TEXTURE THE ENEMY GOTTAGOBYE!
My stress is only around 3/10, surprisingly. I may not have many levels to show in the end but I think that the gameplay will be fun. I changed the name of my project from Weapons of Mass Illumination to Temple of Light – in keeping with the setting. I gotta get back to work, but here – have a screenshot! NOTE: I’m still streaming!! You can watch me finish up at http://www.twitch.tv/fizz55
No time to talk – gotta work. Yes, I am still streaming (it ends around 8:00pm ET to give me time to upload). Jump in http://twitch.tv/fizz55 to watch. Good luck to those still working!
Good luck to jammers – personally I’m just waiting for the uploads to finish. Good night!!
After completing my first Ludum Dare I figured I should take a moment to share my experience and promote my entry of course 😉 Overall I found myself pretty relaxed for the whole thing. I took a few breaks/walks on Saturday and didn’t actually start work until 12:30pm on Sunday. However, I ran into problems with building the final game. I spent submission hour fighting with Unity 5’s HTML5 feature before just building for Windows and posting that. However, I didn’t post the _data folder and had to rebuild/re-post today (around 3:00pm, actually). And I still haven’t finished committing the changes to GitHub (it already froze my computer twice). But all in all this has been a wonderful experience and I look forward to LD33. My entry is called Temple of Light so I encourage Windows users to play that. Additionally, I’ll be playing some entries on stream at http://twitch.tv/fizz55 so check that out too.
You can watch me play your submissions live on http://www.twitch.tv/fizz55 Request your game in the comments and I’ll play it!
I decided to use Java for my MiniLD #59 entry and I’ve had a lot of fun with the theme so far.
For my MiniLD entry, I’ve been working on a simple dungeon generator. Taking a look at the screenshot, you’ll notice the grid. There’s nothing random about that grid, but since the game takes place in a sewer (usually something that is plotted out carefully), it was a nice way to make sure 99.9% of the rooms connect without extra work. The rooms are generated by a simple algorithm found on my GitHub account. Why the random rooms in an orderly sewer? Mysterious bugs have chewed through some of the piping to create nests for their young. I still have a few tweaks to make but everything should be rendering with the correct sprite sheet by the end of the day.
