Hope everyone is keeping well! I finally got around to uploading my Results stream to YouTube, so if you want to re-live the hours leading up to the results, you can check out the video below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h40Wyu08ixM
I'm hosting a 9 day jam where you're encouraged not to cram - and the theme is to avoid violence as a core mechanic of your game!
Recently I've spent time reflecting on the sheer amount of violence/combat orientated video games. Whilst I do not think this is a problem especially, I'm interested in seeing how hard it is to come up with fun game ideas that avoid violence, combat or physical confrontation. The term "enemies" or "baddies" has become such standard terms in gaming - I wonder how many games we can design and make without goodies vs baddies, or designated entities that we are justified in killing!
Register here: https://itch.io/jam/honest-jam-4
With no official LD51 keynote this year, perhaps as a community we can work together to help motivate, advise and hype-up the community ahead of the impending Ludum Dare 51!
We only have 24 hours, but if you want to get involved, please do one (or all!) of the following:
Ideally, send me a video or an audio clip to honestdangames@gmail.com and include your LD username in your email. Each response should be less than 20 seconds in length. Alternatively, you can just leave a text-based comment on this thread, but it'd work a lot better if we can get faces / voices of the community (and would be quicker for me to stitch together some videos!!). Please keep it family friendly.
I'll collate everything I receive before 13:00 BST (08:00 EST) tomorrow (30th) and I'll make a post before the theme reveal! GO GO GO!
(Please note: by sharing your video/voice clip, you're giving me permission to use it in a video that'll be posted to my YouTube and shared on this site)
A reminder for those who want to get involved in the unofficial LD51 Keynote, please see this post:
Send your video / audio / comments by following the details outlined in the original post! Thanks ♥
https://youtu.be/tAoNN22vE
I put out a post yesterday seeking words of wisdom and motivation from the community to serve as an unofficial community keynote! This was very last minute, thanks a lot for all who sent a video or message at short notice. Shoutout to @brainoid for whacking the video together at short notice too.
Credits: @neowhoru @lawrence @kaiherbertz @trexxak @pomo @langotriel @mrphil @ukulelefury @frogman @outfrost @ruddiculous @coleslaughter @kuviman @bauke-regnerus @lex @rainbowkappagames @defrag @icylava @jeremy-ryan @anchorlight @honest-dan @brainoid
Ever wondered how a bearded dragon would handle having eternal hiccups?! Wonder no more, play today!
Our game is cute a 2.5D physics platformer, with wonderful art from the always awesome @Spacey3d!
Hope everyone had a lovely Ludum Dare 51!
As Unreal Engine developers, we know sometimes people can only play HTML5 / Web games! So we created a quick playthrough video to showcase the game! This does include SPOILERS, so we recommend figuring out the puzzles yourself! You can find the game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/51/beardadette-and-the-eternal-hiccup
https://youtu.be/S9RO9w9QITU
Hey all, no submissions today, just want to check out games by friends for a few hours. Feel free to join and check out some of the awesome games made by the community ♥
One of the challenges designing the game during the jam was the constant worry that 10 seconds between each hiccup would feel too long and could make mistakes even more punishing! Our game was a 2.5D physics platformer, where your character uncontrollably hiccups every 10 seconds. The hiccup can turn your standard jump into a double jump - but if you were to mess up your attempt, it would feel dull for the player to wait around for 10 seconds to try again.
The way we tackled this problem was to ensure there were alternative ways to solve puzzles. Almost all of our puzzles included a way to solve the puzzle that wasn't reliant on a well-timed hiccup. However, most puzzles could be solved more efficiently if you could master the timed hiccup. At the time, I still had an overwhelming dread that the game wouldn't be fun - and it impacted my attitude and positivity during the jam. However, thanks to some good puzzle design by @brainoid - the end result came together pretty well.
Gameplay video of our entry: https://youtu.be/S9RO9w9QITU
On the first day of the jam, @brainoid transcribed the puzzles he was thinking up onto paper to try help share his ideas with the team. This is what we've received:
The plan was to have one continuous level like other puzzle platforms like Inside or Limbo, so imagine where it ends on the right, it carries on below. What's great about this is how much of it made it to the final game too! The underground cave puzzle with the key; the treacherous fans, and that pesky hoarder who keeps steeling your shiny things!
This is how it ended up being translated into Unreal, though I've locked the viewport to make it look flat:
In reality, like most 3d engines, our 2d game is still in 3d space - which suited our 2.5d style. Here you can see our level in 3D space. You can see that we achieve parallax without any tricks, the different sprites are distanced apart. This was extra cool as it allowed us to add some actual logic actors in the background too, that added depth to the visuals. Below are all the game areas combined, forming our "master level":
To make working in a team easier, along with some other perks, we utilised level streaming. This is where you create separate level assets, and then you can "include" them (or stream them) into other levels. This meant I could work on "area 1", brainoid could work on "area 2", without having conflicting asset changes. But we both could also see them side by side in a master level, that included all our sub levels. Another perk it offered us was to keep consistent lighting between the levels, and to use the same same backdrop level, so we weren't copying and pasting things. In the past, we've had different game levels look different as we tweaked lighting in one level but didn't remember to update all the other levels.
The dynamic levels ended up helping us with a basic checkpoint system. The nature of a physics puzzle platformer with AI means there's a lot of complex actors to reset, where simply placing them back in their original location may not always be enough. Initially we looked at adding a resettable interface onto everything that needed resetting, and defining that logic for each - but in the end the simplest and an effective solution was just to place all resettable (dynamic) objects into their own sublevel, and just reload that when you restart from a checkpoint. This allowed for consistent world state between player attempts, which is a plus in this type of game.
The level without the resettable dynamic actors:
The level with the dynamic actors:
Hopefully its been interesting to see a bit of behind the scenes on how we got Beardadette and the Eternal Hiccup implemented from a paper design!
Hey all, looking forward to seeing the top voted games from this edition of LD! @pov has mentioned the results will be released a day after the voting closes tomorrow, to give more time to collate the results and prepare tweets for the countdown.
Does anyone know when the results countdown begins on Saturday? I'd like to stream it, but hard to plan without knowing when it'll be.
Also anyone planning to stream it? Drop a link to your twitch or YouTube channels below if so. I enjoyed it last time, I'd recommend it!
I want to bring some topics up for discussion before LD dies down for another couple of months. The core aim of this post being to improve the future jams - since I and many others care a lot for this jam.
@pov I appreciate you apologised for the finale situation and that accidents happen. However, when combined with the events that lead up to it this LD, I think you can do better. If you don't want the community to come together and put energy into creating content around LD, that is your call to make. But at the moment it seems like you DO want to support content creators, yet it's often delivered in half measures which can lead to frustration and disappointment.
No one will argue with the fact that you put a ton of work into every LD. Despite this post probably coming off as a negative post by me, I personally really value the time and effort you put in; I've hosted a few games jams that are 1% of the scale of LD and even those absolutely drain me. Also for the record - I wasn't able to stream the results show this time around, so this post isn't about me being personally impacted by what happened. However, I did see that there were at least 5 streamers (many with 40+ viewers) ready to stream the results at the scheduled time.
I am just not sure where it's going wrong. A year ago you told us you were hiring someone to help, which many of us were pleased to hear as we sense this jam is too much for someone to orchestrate alone. But I am not sure if you still have someone helping or not? My gut feel (backed by no evidence) is that you still work on LD alone, and it is just one of many balls you are juggling in life (alongside work, relationships, side projects and recovery time). I imagine you have great desires and goals for the jam, but a lack of time / energy to deliver them all.
I'd just like to see one of two things really: 1. Allow other people to help, so that there is more time for you to deliver things that are needed 2. Prioritise improvements that will benefit the LD community
To elaborate on point 2, I think its fine that you've always wanted to have games embedded onto the LD site, but really as a feature I'm not sure how much it really benefited the LD community. Clicking on a link to itch to play in a new tab is low effort, and I don't think I've seen anyone ever complain or post asking for this to be improved. Yet that seemed to be the main new feature that was focused on in the weeks leading to jam. It still sadly ended up being buggy - with most games not loading or being cropped incorrectly - bugs which are 100% natural in software dev - but if anything it probably detracted from communities experience in the jam. All the while, there are many other things that the community have probably suggested being improved over the years that remain untouched.
There's plenty of good things that have come in recent years, including the re-work of the karma system, LD extra, the live results tweets, along with many hidden things - such as reworking the backend of the site. But then there are things that have not happened too - and I'm concerned that, with your decision to backtrack on reducing the number of LD's per year, your work load will only increase. There are likely many volunteers (myself included) who would happily help with aspects of the jam, even if not on the technical side but just from an organisation / communication perspective.
I appreciate it is very easy for me to sit in an arm chair and point out things that could be done better. The comments section are open for anyone to discuss what I've said above, whether you agree or disagree - but please remain civil and respectful 🧡
Happy 2023, game jammers! Here's to many new fun and original game ideas being born from Game Jams! 🎆🎇
I'm not sure if we're getting a keynote again this time, so feel free to check out the last-minute community keynote from last jam! Thanks for those who got involved again, and happy jamming to all!
https://youtu.be/tAoNN22vE
Hey all! Me and Brainoid will be having a chat about themes as we look forward to the theme announcement in under an hour! Feel free to join us in the chat, be great to here what people are looking forward to!
Happy to get over the finish line. Congrats to you all ♥
Star Tech: Deep Space Mine is a chilled puzzle-builder, where you strategically place buildings to harvest resources in a rotating multi-disc space mining rig!
How it started:
How it got submitted:
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/52/star-tech-deep-space-mine
As is often the case in game jams, it seems Brainoid and I didn't make enough time for player onboarding and didn't have any form of tutorial... :D
The game isn't too deep, but can be hard to grasp the core mechanics without any guidance. Hopefully the below video helps!
https://youtu.be/aWmnVS27LjM
We aimed to make an orbital city builder with dorf romantic style "find satisfying tile placements" mechanics, with a hint of resource management and chaos.
As usual, we know many people prefer web builds when trying out jam entries in Ludum Dare! Since we develop our games in Unreal Engine - we can't easily publish web builds - so here's a narrated Let's Play that should help people get an idea of how our game plays.
In a nutshell, it has an orbital building system like Frostpunk, with some Dorfromantic feels, some strategic resource management, and a hint of Match-3!
https://youtu.be/hEIoLHRa6jk
Hey all, hope you enjoyed LD52! I believe this Saturday (8.30PM UK time) the top 15 live is scheduled. Is anyone planning to stream it? I would like to, but am visiting a friend for his birthday in my home town so will be away! Feel free to drop links to your Twitch / Youtube here if you plan to <3