For the first time ever I have the time to participate in a Ludum Dare, so I’m in (three hours into development at the present). I’ll be solo-developing “Skull and Crossbones”, a piratical combat and plundering game. Basically, you will control a pirate ship in a single fixed area, and various ships will spawn and try to cross this area. Some will be armed, some will carry valuable cargo. Your goal is to collect as much loot as possible before your ship is destroyed using a fixed number of persistent cannonballs.

I’ll be working with GameMaker: Studio, potentially using sfxr and musagi for sound and music assets.

Development is livestreaming here: http://www.twitch.tv/glenugie

Just to give an idea of what I’m doing, here’s an in-progress screenshot of the game without any fancy visual effects:

Skull and Crossbones is coming along well, the basic engine is place, along with most of the mechanics that I’ll need. Sound/music assets are in place, visual effects still need a little work though. The primary challenge now is going to be scripting a reasonably intelligent AI for the British Navy ships. Currently they just approach you and wait for you to pepper them with cannons. This would be fine, except cannonballs are a persistent resource, and when they hit ships they slow down – slow down enough and they can be picked up. Eventually it gets to the point where the Navy ships possess all the cannonballs (until a powerup floats in) but refuse to fire them.

Development is still live-streaming at http://www.twitch.tv/glenugie

Mandatory screenshot demonstrating progress:

After plenty of hard work (stream logs + off-camera time seem to suggest around 20 hours over today and yesterday), Skull and Crossbones is finished and submitted to the Compo. I’m quite pleased with how everything has come out – though with more time (and artistic ability) I think some extra animations and visual effects would’ve helped bring it all together.

The AI came out better than I expected, though it can still be dumber than a bag of rocks at times. Endlessly circling a cannonball that it wants to pick up but can’t quite reach comes to mind as an example.

As it stands, this has been a great first Ludum Dare for me – hopefully my schedule will let me participate in more in the future.

After a very slow start yesterday, we've managed to pull this one off I think. With a slightly liberal interpretation of the theme, we have a top-down puzzle game featuring the horrible dolls from the "It's a Small World" ride (look it up, never be free of that incessant jingle again). Spent most of yesterday developing the lighting, pretty happy with the result. Development from now is however many levels we can crank out before the end of the night. We both have work tomorrow so despite submitting to the jam we won't get to take advantage of the extra day.

HTML5 version of the game is available on itch.io: https://glenugie.itch.io/dollsworld

This is my entry to the compo, an inventory puzzler about trying to scavenge a ruined city for unstable scrap to fulfil contracts. You'll have to carefully balance loot such as fragile crystals, teleporting artefacts, crushing weights, and the ever versatile duct tape to earn enough cash for upgrades and to climb your way up the scrapper ladder!

I'd be very appreciative if you could check it out and let me know what you think!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/why-cant-i-hold-all-these-items