My first Ludum Dare over the weekend -- had a blast programming Seven Pillars, making all of the assets, and getting almost no sleep for a couple days. Already looking forward to LD39.
Thank you Paint.NET, Sibelius, and Python!
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/$25567
Python, as a language, is pretty great; it uses pretty intuitive syntax, has thorough documentation and support, and is overall versatile and easy to pick up. However, one thing that it absolutely sucks at is exporting to an executable, especially if you use external assets and libraries.
This was my first Ludum Dare, and I chose to program Seven Pillars in python (using pygame). After finishing the Compo on Saturday, I started researching ways to actually distribute so that people wouldn't have to literally download Ubuntu, python, and pygame -- and clone my GitHub repository -- in order to play my game.
If anyone else has this problem, there is a very useful walkthrough here: https://irwinkwan.com/2013/04/29/python-executables-pyinstaller-and-a-48-hour-game-design-compo/. It was made by a participant of LD26 and is the only reason my game is now reasonably playable outside of my computer.
Overall, it was a useful experience, and while I almost certainly will avoid using python/pygame in the future (in favor of a more cross-platform-friendly engine like Unity), I'm glad I managed to find a way to compile Seven Pillars for Windows before judging began.
You can check out my submission here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/seven-pillars
This was my first Compo, and first Ludum Dare for that matter, and I decided to take a somewhat different approach than most games. With some inspiration drawn from former Ludum Dare winners (looking at you, "The Rock, the Paper, and the Scissors"), I decided to make a relatively simple game and put a much greater emphasis on the aesthetics and style than on the gameplay itself.
It turns out that frame-by-frame animation takes a whole lot of time. I've done a lot of digital art and cartoons in the past, but animation is another monster. I originally wanted to make eleven animation sequences for my game's character: idle, right and left jumping, and attacking in each cardinal direction and on the diagonals. After finishing the idle and one attack animations, I quickly realized this was infeasible in 48 hours along with finishing the game's code and writing the music.
Instead, I decided to use one attacking animation for all directions and simply reverse the jump-right animation when jumping left (ninja cat backflips, anyone?). While I could have (maybe) gotten all of the material created, I felt that it was a time and work commitment greater than is reasonable for how much it would improve the playing experience.
Overall, how do the quality/breadth of animations affect your gameplay experiences? Would you rather play a game that is very polished visually at the expense of the number of levels/smoothness of gameplay? Do you have a preference for computer-generated particle effects or for frame-by-frame animation for Ludum Dare games? Does your opinion change between Compo and Jam submissions?
You can download Seven Pillars here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4O5d69PTcqrdFpYNkFtOEdoSkE/view?usp=sharing
This is my first Compo, and I'm looking forward to getting some feedback and playing everyone's games!
If you want to play my game, Seven Pillars, you can check it out here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/seven-pillars.
Otherwise, comment a link to your game and I'll make sure to check it out!
LD38 was my first Ludum Dare and my first game jam, and I wasn’t sure exactly how far I would get or what to expect, but I’m really satisfied with my final product. I entered the Compo, programmed in Python, and made all the art, animation, and music in the 48-hour time period.
My game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/seven-pillars
This theme was not particularly inspiring to me, and I had a hard time thinking of anything beyond “doing x activity on a tiny planet.” It took me several hours before I came up with a solid game idea.
At first, I was going to create around eleven animation sequences for the main character (eight attacks for each direction!), plus a crumbling pillar animation and a dynamic background. I quickly discovered that this was WAY outside the scope of what I could do in 48-hours, so I backtracked, made one attacking animation, and reversed the “jump right” animation for jumping left.
I didn’t have a good idea of how Python is packaged and compiled, and was unfamiliar with tools for this like pyinstaller and py2exe. Once the Compo ended, I figured that my game was essentially unplayable because it would require Linux, python, pygame, and git to install (whoops). A few days later, after a few hours, I finally figured out how to create a Windows executable. In the future, I’ll probably use an engine like Unity for easier distribution.
Jesus Christ. I need to learn to take care of myself.
I really like how my game looks. The animation is smoother than I anticipated (I haven’t done animation since the DSi and Flipnote), and the overall theme and style is nice. I originally was going to make it darker, with a more serious, ninja-like character; however, I’m glad that I pivoted because the sword cat was more fun to animate.
I totally expected complete writer’s block for the music, but I managed to sit down with Sibelius and make the tune in an hour or two. It’s pretty brief, but it loops well and has some depth to it.
I had an incredible time making this, and I’m planning on doing Ludum Dare a lot in the future. The community is great, problematic website aside, and I had a great time making this little game and sharing it with the world.
Everybody seems to be doing these things, so I suppose I'll hop on the bandwagon.
If you want to play the game referred to by critics as "awkward," "hard," and "cat," feel free to check out my game at this url: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/seven-pillars
Back for a second round of Ludum Dare, armed with Paint.NET, Sibelius, poor time-management skills, and a mediocre understanding of Python.
Goals for this Ludum Dare: - Make a more complex game (perhaps not mechanically, but more varied would be nice) - Do more sprite work and more than one animation - Go ham on music, and have some sound effects - Break top 100 in two or more categories
Time to get no sleep and spend 48 hours ironing out bugs!
I just submitted my second ever Compo entry: Mountaintop Groovy Robot Laser Battle.
Last Ludum Dare, I didn't have a good idea of how much time animation would take. This time around, I made a very basic script, then worked on assets almost exclusively. After I had most of the animations and art I needed, I went back to making the game. This seemed to work better.
I got some this time. It may have been exclusively during daylight hours, but hey, I might not be totally dead next week.
Both events, I focused on making a simple, clean game rather than one with elaborate gameplay and few visual elements.
I meant to become familiar with an engine like Unity over the last four months, but it never happened. Oh well. It was just as difficult to get an executable working this time around, but it took hours instead of days.
I'm rather proud of my submissions for both of these competitions, simple as they may be.
If you want to play my game, here's a link. Enjoy! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/mountaintop-groovy-robot-laser-battle
Second Compo successfully completed! I focused primarily on art and animation this time around. You play as a robot and share a power supply between your character and your weapon.
You can play my game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/mountaintop-groovy-robot-laser-battle
Fight the following monstrous foes: - A two-headed snake dinosaur - An angry purple man with large fists - A defenseless stuffed teddy bear who hasn't wronged you
Unless you are unmusical, deaf, or are just a rebellious preteen who doesn't like being told what to do, in which case go by the flashing lights. I don't judge. You be you.
Okay, I'm done with the self promotion for now. Have a good judging season guys.
Link to my game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/mountaintop-groovy-robot-laser-battle
LD39 was my first attempt at a rhythm-based game, so I put more effort than usual into making a catchy and rhythmic soundtrack. You can listen to it on Soundcloud here:
https://soundcloud.com/user-565506175/fredericks-theme
In general, to what extent does music impact the enjoyability of a game? Can a game be good with a mediocre soundtrack? Alternatively, can an otherwise mediocre game be really engaging because of the quality of its music?
(You can also play my game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/mountaintop-groovy-robot-laser-battle)
Play the game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/mountaintop-groovy-robot-laser-battle
Last Ludum Dare, word clouds were a thing, so I made this based on all of the comments on my game. Mainly what I'm getting is that my game looks nice, but the gameplay is clunky and all kinds of awful :)
You can generate a word cloud for your game pretty easily at this site (or one of the many similar ones) and pasting in all of the comments you have received: http://www.wordclouds.com/
You can play Mountaintop Groovy Robot Laser Battle in all of it's clunky glory here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/mountaintop-groovy-robot-laser-battle
Here's to another successful Ludum Dare! Look forward to seeing the ratings.
Before making all of my actual art and animations, I made a mostly-functional prototype with crappy placeholder images. Does anyone else have any funny placeholder or "programmer art" to share?
You can also play my game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/mountaintop-groovy-robot-laser-battle
This is my second Ludum Dare, and I think it went better than my first. For both events, I prioritized graphics, audio, and overall feel to the actual quality of gameplay, which is evident from the ratings I have received. While this meant that I spent the majority of the event drawing sprite sheets and writing music, it also got me ranked 23rd in Graphics *and *10th in Audio for Ludum Dare 39. Not bad, considering I only broke top 100 in the "Innovation" category last event.
I plotted my ranking as a percentile for all Compo submissions for both events, and I improved in every category except Fun. This is pretty consistent with the comments I received for both games, which followed the general trend of "looks pretty, but mostly unplayable."
Looking forward to LD40 in December!
Pick up items and infiltrate a generic enemy hideout. Watch out, though --- the more items you pick up, the more difficult it is to find the one you're looking for.
This is my first time doing the Jam, rather than the Compo, so I figured that the extra time and lack of coding commitment would allow me to take up a massive amount of animation work.
In our game, * Big Pockets, * you pick up a comical amount of items as you sneak and fight your way out of an enemy hideout. Unfortunately, each of these items needed to be individually animated, such that each was compatible with the player's attack, run, idle, and jump animations.
I'm actually a little surprised at how far in this endeavor I managed to get. I animated a total of nine different items (only eight made it into the final game), a few of which I've shown below, in addition to making terrain, background, and enemy sprites. This was only about half of the items we had originally scoped for, but we ran into a few programming roadblocks that prevented us from fully realizing our vision for this Jam.
Here are a few of the item animations in Big Pockets:
* Slingshot: *
* Lockpick: *
* Baseball bat: *
* Banana: *
Use a variety of items to infiltrate an enemy hideout and steal their secret codes. However, the more items you have, the harder it will be to use them.
Play the game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/big-pockets
Big Pockets has 20 ratings in all categories except audio, for which it has 19. If you're interested in experiencing this bouncy super-spy puzzle platformer, then grab some headphones and throw us one last rate.
You can find our game here.
Happy holidays, and keep jamming!
It's been a year since I've participated in the Compo, but I'm back!
For the last two LD's I worked on team projects, and while fun, they doesn't quite have the same cathartic feeling as the one-man 48-hour sleep deprivation marathon.
I'll have the following up my sleeve:
Shoot for the moon. If you miss, your frozen corpse will forever serve as a monument to your failure. (ExtraFabulousComics)