Thank you, gamedev community !

I would like to take a short minute to discuss what my experience in LD41 has been so far. I could be really brief and just state that it was and still is amazing, but that would do all the hard work everyone put in little justice. Congratulations to all that submitted a product, you are all beasts for delivering in 2 (compo) or 3(jam) days ! And for all those that tried, but did not deliver in time... Don't fret, you've started something amazing that still contributes to the world of games and you undoubtedly learned valuable lessons on scope, time management and what not !

I want to provide a short timeline of how my personal progress happened, maybe some of you will recognize the stages of rushed game development !

(https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/bumper-buddies)

1) Waiting for the theme For me this was Friday night at 4am. I had stupidly stayed up late looking up rules and setting up design documents to use... Oh boy... This will be a hard one... What do I make that is fun ? What genres are either rare or completely bonkers to combine? A rythm based golf game? Chess soccerball ? A turn based FPS? Nope... the scope alerts were real and it was definitely not realistic to just slam together game concepts. Kudos to whoever managed to do that !

3) Nearly giving up Nope...this is not going to be my first LD. The theme is killing my brain and I keep thinking in circles. I need a break, a spark, LD41 is already 12 hours underway and I have an empty word document... Time to visit the Twitch game dev community and see what they are up to... Hey ! There are people with the same problem... Maybe ... there is a concept hidden out there ... Blam, enter the spark... Pinball machines ... virtual pets ... happy fun memories... Feasible? Perhaps... OK why not ! Misses Javasaurus? Break out the mint tea, I got work to do !!!!!

5) And so it began... Just go for it... it is now Saturday afternoon, just went to the supermarket and got some provisions. Put my son on my lap and started playing with physics on a plane ! Got the ball rolling... Bumper Buddies is born !

6) Progress...Can we make it? Oh crap time flew by... it is now 11 pm and I finally have the pinball machine up and running...Granted it looks like a truck drove over it and the audio is making my face hurt, but it is generating a score...Might pull this off after all !

7) Late night shows Holy crud, it is now 4am again... the first 24 hours have passed and I have exactly half a game without proper graphics. There is now a very basic virtual pet thing with bars that increase or decrease and it can grow and or die etc etc... For now it is just an egg that turns into a blob, but hey, 20 years ago this was the bomb !!!

8)Sunday Funday Got up, went to the supermarket again...made breakfast for the family (oh that delicious nutella spread should get my cholesterol pumping again...). I earned this... I sprinted back upstairs with fresh enthousiasm and dove right into linking both game mechanics.

9)7 hours to go? Time for bikeshedding ! Hey, I got this... I just need to finish my UI and add a leaderboard. How hard can it be? Dove right into it...Took me over 5 hours to get the UI to display it properly and to actually get a plausible score. On top of that, late jam crashes started to happen and I fixed those urgently ...

10)The last stand... Ok, all systems check...This is ground control... Wait a second... There are no graphics O.o QUICK, 2 hours to go, plenty of time to whip up something... WELL in the end it was very limited but it is playable and does not look like a collection of white sticks and a ping pong ball on a blue canvas !

11)The grandest stage of em all... You may have guessed from my spelling and grammar, BUT I made it ! There legitly is a LD page (https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/bumper-buddies) with my game on it... 4 am again and a working day tomorrow... This is gonna sting ... But we did it, thank you everyone ... To make the analogy to wrestling, we are on the mainstage of game-jamania!

12)The aftermath Quite unexpectedly I am completely stuck in jam mode... It feels like muscle memory at this point to go back to the LD page and play other entries and read the comments on Bumper Buddies. This community is amazing, I love it... MAYBE I will pick up streaming again, since the attention the game dev world gave to me and received from me is sweeter than maple syrup on a large stack of pancakes...Speaking of which, I am hungry ...

Request Well I think I am pretty much obliged to advertise Bumper Buddies here due to the interesting rating system... But that is not really the message I wanted to put across. I want to sincerely thank everyone for putting their heart and soul into a product for me to play and appreciate the opinion I have on it. I hope you all play as many games as you can.

(https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/bumper-buddies)

But above all ... !!! GAME(DEV) ON BROTHERS AND SISTERS !!!

Dear jammers. First off thanks for making this a great first experience !

Second, I have fixed a couple of bugs that could break the game in certain conditions (for example the ball falling through the plunger, the settings menu becoming unclickable). Other than that, the leaderboards are working (they were already, but the scores never showed up due to a silly bug in the panel activation)

LONG STORY SHORT,

Have a nice time playing games (and not necessarily or exclusively Bumper Buddies) !

Hey jammers ! As I scanned the rules I found that it is allowed to port to another platofrm. As I only had a windows build running, I felt like I needed to make the port to a webGL build so people can actually play Bumper Buddies It took me a while but I managed to get it running (mostly a bug in controls). For those looking for pinball fun? Let's gooooo

Dear developer, gamer, jammer…

As I assume anyone that reads this to by now have learned about the controversy surrounding the rating system, I would like to take a minute of your time to elaborate on my personal experience and opinion. Before going in depth I would like to start off by encouraging everyone to not be tempted into contentless discussion, as it is clear from many precedents that this leads to nothing but grief and arguing. Everybody who participated, even those who did not finish a game in time, deserve praise for their attempts and the throwing of mud is just inappropriate here.

That being said, over the course of the last few days I have tried to be constructive in discussing the current rating system. I think it is important to do this by entering in discussions that are provided with valuable arguments and that might contribute to a better experience for everyone, but after writing a few elaborate comments, I decided it might be better to write a proper summarizing blog post where the discussion can be kept alive and be even more transparent and accessible by everyone and it also should be clear that no single individual or group is being targeted.

But before I make my personal analysis, I would like to address some comments that are recurring very frequently. If I paraphrase: “It is not a competition, Ludum Dare is about making a game”. I respect that opinion but I would dare to nuance it. Games are being rated so a developer can get honest feedback, which for me personally was the driving force behind my development cycle. The rank is a nice bonus and seemingly flows naturally from the scores given in the various areas. So, you might be right, for some it is not a competition, for others it is, but what we all should share is the desire and right for recognition of your work, to learn and grow in the areas we excel in or lack. Another one is “It has been like this forever, it is what makes it Ludum Dare”. I am horribly sorry if I should offend anyone by saying that this is a load of crap, and is even contradictory to the earlier statement. For me personally this was my first entry, but I did follow Ludum Dare for a few years now and I have to say it is very sad to see the amount of demotivated game developers after the jam. It might be true that problems have been around for a long way, but ignoring them for the sake of having a popular opinion is not the way to go. It can be solved.

Finally, do allow me to expand on my personal experience. I decided to join the Ludum Dare event pretty late, I believe I officially committed to doing it not 24 hours before it started. I remember going through the rules the day before and having friends telling me I should worry less and it all is relatively straightforward. After that I asked my wife if it would be for me to lock myself up and make the best darn game I could. Laugh all you want, but I respect her and my toddler son enough that they should be okay with me doing it. A 48 hour jam is not a small task and I would not be able to help a lot in the household. 48 hours later I had slept for just 5 hours and I took some breaks to have some time with my kid. I also noticed I was sitting down too much as my one foot was swollen to double its normal size. So an important lesson learned…No jam is worth that, take plenty of rest, get up, walk around. Anyway, I finished the game loop and decided to not bother with too much art anymore, which also is clearly the explanation to the poor score in that area. I was proud of what I had and I was awaiting that sweet sweet sense of recognition when the voting was underway. Fast forward 3 weeks, the ratings were released and I was happy at first, I wound up where I expected to be and that was slightly above average! Not bad for a first time compo submission! But then I started seeing alarming posts. Both offensive and defensive, the blame game was underway and things got even worse when it turned out the rules might have been inadvertently not respected for one of the winners. To make matters worse, due to poor communication there were indications that the score was manipulated due to the fact a single group had voted within its own members. I have to say, at first that did raise a lot of questions to me and I have tried to be constructive about it, but I have noticed the back and forward salvos of arguments are still flying over everyone’s head, which is also the major reason I decided to make a blog post.

So here comes the juicy part… Was there cheating? Well that depends on what you consider cheating. According strictly to the rules? Yes there was cheating, as one of the games won the audio category, while none of the audio was made by the contestant. This was amended though, so if that is cheating or bad preparation (not everyone is as crazy to read the entire page of rules as deeply as I did), I leave that open for interpretation. What does concern me way more is the way the voting system works. I was not aware of it before the start and I apparently needed to see it for myself. The alarming part is that the winning game has but 20 votes, where there are other games that received over tenfold that number. I learned in statistics that these sample sizes are not comparable at all, furthermore any ranking based on averages is a nice attempt…But meaningless. Luckily (but maybe not so much for the gamedeveloper) this was clearly exposed during this LD, even more than was the case for previous editions. In the comment section there undeniably was what I call “friendly voting”, overestimating a game’s metrics, which caused its rating to skyrocket. And just to be clear, this is not bashing the unnamed group in question, the developers behind it or even the hosts of the Ludum Dare events. This is just me trying to explain what is not a “flawed system”, but what is a broken system all together. Statistically, pulling a random entry out of all entries to win would make more sense than having varying samples from varying voting pools. I received arguments that the event is too large and rating 3000 games in a way that is both qualitative and fast is impossible. That brings me back to the same arguments I received before writing my comments. If the rank is not important to anyone… then it does not matter if rating all games takes 3 weeks of 3 months. So here is my suggestion:

The days following the submission date for ludum dare were filled with enthousiastic twitch streamers (probably also a lot of activity on youtube, but I did not personally follow that). Sidenote, these people deserve utter respect, I have seen some of them play over 150 games while ranking them fairly. The way it often works now is that a streamer either selects random games or has viewers register a slot to get played. I also have noticed that the LD page features twitch streamers. These people are doing it for free and combined, they played (roughly estimated) over half of all games. I would make these channels featured referees during ludum dare, giving them more exposure while they in return rate games on stream. It is a pure win-win situation that doesn’t have to cost anything but a title and a feature status on the LD page, something that already is implemented for the largest part. The counterargument for this is that the public should not lose its voting power. That is most definitely true, but a refereeing system is not intended to eliminate votes. It rather is a layer on top of the public votes, where the effects of “buddy voting” will be reduced. Should it still be required, an even smaller panel of “experts” or “LD veterans” could rate and play the finalists, making a semi-final decision. A lot of salt would be avoided this way and it surely would be beneficial to everyone, as even games that did not make it to 20 votes (it is a popularity contest, do not even question that) would get a form of rank in one way or another, through the streamer-referees. And now, intentionally saved for last, I want to put down an official disclaimer that I am not a salty loser and I do not want to be in the victor’s place. Despite my slightly above ratings, which I am happy with, I can’t deny I felt a little bit offended by blind and wild accusations of being jealous and a sore loser (some people call me java-sore-ass already, thank you @HonestDanGames), but I only want a constructive discussion and hope that the LD team picks this up. For me it is clear, the post-jam explosion of comments and arguing has made me believe LD is “not my jam”, at least not until the rating is ameliorated.

But who knows… The itch might come back like it did for LD41 and I might join in again next time, maybe “just for fun” like the majority of you people out there 😊. Heck, I might even do it all on stream (SHAMELESS ADVERTISING)

With a giant respectful roar, cheers and Dev On,

JavaSaurus

Hey everyone. First and foremost, I'd like to say thank you to everyone that made this event possible in these bizarre times. Certainly the hosts of the event, but also every programmer, artist, musician, playtesters ... And all combinations of the above ! You are awesome.

Now that that's out of the way... Time for a shameless plug !

So I noticed that a lot of people never made it to the end of the game... I made a new trailer for people that do not want to play through it all ! :D

https://youtu.be/cvpnRiwrXAY

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/long-live-the-king

I'll get back to rating now :) Hope to hear from you.

Stay safe !

Cheers,

Dr. JavaSaurus

Hey Jammers and Players !

Tonight marks the one week anniversary of our venture :) And to celebrate... I decided to put out some cheat codes for Long Live The King ! :D Just type the following words during gameplay ! Hope you enjoy !

• HULK one shot all enemies

• IQUIT warp to the boss stage

• IAMSPEED grants superhuman speed

• BIGBABY self...explanatory !

Cheers and stay safe,

Dr JavaSaurus

Goodmorning everyone ! :D

Me and my 4 year old are bonding heavily this week over Ludum Dare Games ! :D We've even done a couple of Twitch streams, which were completely amazing and fun. However, as a parent, I need some time to pre-screen them to make sure they're appropriate for his age.

So rather than ME browsing through the thousands of submissions, why don't YOU tell me about your game! We could provide you with a timestamp on our VODs !

And offcourse, having you play our game would be nice :) Leave a comment so we know you played it, we can then decide to bump you up on our list as a reward :D

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/long-live-the-king

Cheers and have a good weekend,

Dr JavaSaurus

After a slight panic episode where I was really doubting if I could make my initial mechanic fun, I think I'm onto something ! 2 am now, time for bed and tomorrow...Let's go HARD ! Crash Thunderstud, Zombie-Slayer is back for more !

Hoping to get something done for compo ! Come seeme at https://www.twitch.tv/drjavasaurus if you want to see more or give feedback ! :)

5 years ago, when I finally felt confident enough to make my own game without tutorials in Unity... I created Crash Thunderstud... I am so happy to announce that I've come full circle and this Ludum Dare is dedicated to the awesomeness, the unprecedented coolness factor, the undisputed nature of Crash. Ladies and Gentlement... It is with great pride that I introduce you to : Crash Thunderstud Returns !

https://javasaurus.itch.io/crash-thunderstud-returns

So you've finished a game? Great job ! Why don't you come over to my channel at Twitch so we can give it a go and rate it ! :D

https://www.twitch.tv/drjavasaurus

!submit !ld47

Hey jammers ! I'll be live in a bit to rate games and drink tea... And I'm all out of tea !

Come see me at www.twitch.tv/drjavasaurus and use the !submit command !

ON A SIDENOTE , it came to my attention that my game actually plays quite nicely on mobile !

Crash Thunderstud Returns.

Hey Jammers ! Hope I can entice you to my game with the following video :)

Want me to rate your game? Keep an eye on when I'm live at www.twitch.tv/drjavasaurus

Hey all ! We'll do a short stream today, want to have your game rated and played ? Just hop in and use the !submit command :) Let's go !

twitch.tv/drjavasaurus

Hey jammers ! Want me to play your game on stream? Come over to twitch.tv/DrJavaSaurus and use the "!submit", please submit into the google form ! Hope to see you there !

Hey dear jammers ! Want me to rate your game on stream ? Why don't you come fill up my queue for today ! (Please make use of the google form, you can get the link by using the !submit command in my chat) You can find me at www.twitch.tv/drjavasaurus. The channel has a new logo as of today !

Hey jammers! Still in need of more ranks? Drop by in my twitch channel and !submit your game :D . Were live, rate-addicted and ready to play your game !

twitch.tv/drjavasaurus

UPDATE

Due to your kind feedback and the fact that people were playing this game with such passion it actually physically hurt their wrists… I have decided to make a post jam version that is more enjoyable in a certain way :

• Loops have a duration and don’t instantly expire when releasing the mouse button
• There are now shop icons that allow you to choose what to buy at any given time
• There are exploding barrels for zombie control

You can find it at my LD page !

Happy zombie looping !

As people were having complaints and issues playing the game on PC using a mouse, I have spent today to create a more elaborate version of the game !

UPDATES

• 2 additional types of zombies
• loops stay longer, reducing the need to continuously circle enemies
• upgrade events are now bound in a shop, allowing players to chose a powerup at any time when they have enough points (stack amount is limited)
• slightly rebalanced scores
• fixed difficulty ramp bug
• added more sound effects

Feel free to play this version here ! The original version is also still available. Ratings and feedback are ever so appreciated!

Aside from this all, I have been streaming daily for the entire week and today my throat was a bit sore and I don't want to bother you with a shot voice and stuffy nose. I still plan to do streams to rate entries though ! Keep an eye out at twitch.tv/drjavasaurus or drop me a DM when I'm not online :).

To all you jammers, you rock and thank you for making this Ludum Dare and the process of rating amazing !

Cheers !

Got a need for some extra rating? Drop by my stream at www.twitch.tv/drjavasaurus. Submit them in chat and I'll play them ! :) Cheers !