I've been meaning to do Ludum Dare for a while now but haven't been able to. Now my schedule is pretty clear and I think I'll be able to participate in the compo (or jam, if I want).

I used to use a custom-built C engine but right now I don't have such a thing up and running. Luckily, however, I've become quite fond of Godot recently, and so I'll be using it for the competition (likely with a 2D game, but we'll see).

Other tools I could end up using include: - Aseprite - GIMP - Krita - Blender - Beepbox - LMMS - BFXR - Audacity

I've also recently been playing a much wider set of games, as I recently got a Switch. There are a few games I might try to base my entry off of a little bit, including Celeste, Enter the Gungeon, and Opus Magnum.

I also might try some new things with regards to asset creation. I usually do pixel art, but I might try hand-drawn (well, hand-drawn in Krita) animation. I also might try recording sound effects instead of doing them with BFXR (even though I don't have any professional audio recording equipement).

As far as themes go, I don't like a whole lot of them. I honestly can't even pick a favorite as none of them really stand out to me. Colonization and prisoner both leave a lot of space politically and thematically, and it would be interesting (and perhaps very revealing...) to see how the community acts on them.

Probably the best themes in the game-oriented category are "One rule" and "Side effects" as those leave a lot of interpretations both inside and outside of specific game mechanics. I don't think I prefer one over the other though.

Anyways, good luck to everybody. See ya for the competition. :v:

Out of curiosity, I tallied up the up and down votes from these two polls by @mathstr0fficial: - Upvotes - Downvotes

and I created an estimated ranking of the themes.

Here's the ranking with the vote tallies:

1. Night is coming (24)
2. Shelter (8)
3. Making connections (6)
4. Unconventional travel (5)
5. Start with nothing (2)
6. Side effects (1)
7. Mutation (0)
8. One item, many uses (-1)
9. Small character, big enemies (-3)
10. Factory (-4)
11. Isolation (-6)
12. Evolve to survive (-14)
13. Take one, leave the rest (-15)
14. Duplication (-15)
15. Low tech (-16)

According to this, Night is coming will win by a landslide. I'm not sure how the rest of you feel about that theme, but it's one of my least favorite.

Anyways, these polls usually don't predict the theme. But be prepared if Night is coming does win, I guess. :sweat_smile:

ok?

Honestly I can see the problems people have but I think this theme is ok.

I'm not planning on doing much creative with the theme. Instead, I'm simply taking on a bit of an idea, which I'm going to call "sandbox roguelike capture the flag."

Here's a screenshot:

I do in fact have an idle animation and a walk animation (although the idle one might be too active):

Sadly OBS does not play nice with Godot on Windows, so I can't use it to get a screencapture. If anyone can recommend other options that would be great.

Sadly I am quite tired, but I may stay up a little longer doing ... something.

This took a lot longer than it should have because there is apparently a bug where the player won't always hit the platform due to gravity, so I had to implement grace frames simply for the collisions between player and ground to work as expected...

(this was not my previous experience writing a platformer in Godot; I'm guessing it's because I'm using very small pixel numbers for everything)

I should probably go to bed now; hopefully progress will go a lot smoother tomorrow.

I've got one element of the sandbox down: breaking the world. Now I just have to implement putting it back together. :smile:

Building and destroying both work now. Now I need to implement the rest of inventory management, and then on to worldgen and other fun stuff.

I got all the inventory mechanics done (hopefully without any glitches...) and now I'm getting worldgen to a usable point.

Only problem is that Godot cannot possibly generate the physics tilemap fast enough to keep up so I'm going to have to do some clever hacks to make that work.

I've made a lot of progress since my last post. The inventory has gotten a new look, a crafting menu has been added, and trees have been added to the worldgen.

Still quite a bit to do. I don't know if I want to stay up but we'll see.

I am much too tired to create another screencapture, but since my last post I've implemented two more tools, a coal block, world generation for coal near the surface, and a furnace crafting station. That is probably the most content I've ever produced in two hours for Ludum Dare.

I'm guessing I want to do the Jam so I can get as much stuff shoved in as possible.

See ya'll tomorrow.

I really like how the world generator is coming along. Sadly the screencapture is huge for some reason so I had to trim it down.

Turns out I could be flying instead. :smile:

I finally got my game published. You can see it here.

I can't say it'll live up the hype though. It ended up being quite wonky. :smiley:

I swear, I keep seeing the same themes over and over. Some that I wouldn't even expect to be duplicated--I'm pretty sure I've seen "Finish with nothing" like four times by now... (and I'm less than a sixth of the way through)

Edit: And now I've seen something like "Venture out, but come back for dinner" twice... what..?

Super excited for Ludum Dare! There's a number of themes that I voted up this time, so hopefully we get something kinda fun.

I've been working on a Godot base code a little bit--basically just some pre-laid-out UI controls with gamepad support (as I'm hoping to make a gamepad-supported game). Of course I will have to draw new buttons, etc during the competition. :smile:

My plan is to make a 2D game, almost certainly pixel art. Tools I'll be using: - Godot - Aseprite - GIMP, probably - LMMS - Audacity, potentially

I'm actually relatively excited about music this time. I've been playing around with LMMS a little bit, and taking a little bit of music theory. I'm at the point where I can throw a bunch of harmony onto a melody, along with a little bit of OK instrumentation, and I think that in any case it should be better than my previous music.

I also really want to scope my game well this time. Last Ludum Dare I had a lot of fun speedrunning my game and I think that would work even better if my game was more or less complete. So my game plan is to try to get all of the content finished by tomorrow, and spend Sunday polishing (and making music, probably). That seems like a daunting task but hopefully I can pull it off.

See ya all for the competition! :smile:

I finally have something to post woohoo!

So my concept is a game where you are this plant guy and you're trying to keep a colony of little plant particles alive. You're rewarded for keeping more alive as they expand your ability to perform different platforming moves (like grappling hook, which is what I have implemented so far)

I think this is probably enough for one day but it seems like good progress so far. :smile:

I have pretty much implemented everything I need to in terms of player movement. The player has a grapple ability, a flying ability, and a platform generation ability. You can use them in midair, limited by how many particles you have with you. The more of the particles you keep alive, the more mobility you have.

I also redrew the player sprite. I think it looks a little better.

The rest of the plan for today is to finish as much of the actual level design as possible and then work on polish and music tomorrow. :smile:

I'm surprised to see that Ludum Dare is coming up again so soon! Nonetheless I'm hyped as usual. I would really like to write a game in C again one of these days, but sadly I still haven't put together a usable C game engine.

I'm not great at theme suggestions, but here's what I came up with. The first and second themes are not particularly inspired, while the third is inspired by my recent endeavors in Mario Maker... I've had a lot of fun exploring arbitrary challenges for the sake of arbitrary-ness.

Very conveniently, two of my classes do not have homework this week, and I have more than enough time to finish the rest of my homework before Friday evening.

I have to say I'm very lucky to have such a clear schedule!

Either way, I'm definitely looking forward to this Ludum Dare. Last Ludum Dare was probably my personally most satisfying entry, to the point that I've actually been developing it further. The secret is to really, really stick to the "small scope" idea. Last time I had all my gameplay finished before I went to bed Saturday, and I think that will be by new goal. If it isn't done by Saturday, it's getting scrapped.

Anyways, I'm looking forwards to seeing everybody's games! Good luck everybody! :smile:

I've finished all my homework and so that means I have Friday to relax before Ludum Dare! Better stock up on snacks and maybe put together some base code!

Good luck to everybody! I hope everybody will have a great weekend! :smile: