Hi friends! Hope you all had fun working on your submissions this weekend.

I had a lot of fun! It really came down to the wire, but here's the game I made. Well, I would have loved to add more closed captioning and subtitles (to the ending, for example) but I think it stands on its own? Lemme know.

Controls: click the left mouse button in different places. There is a subtle hovering sound effect over clickable zones. I am sorry I didn't have time to add a visual indicator. If you feel stuck, try using the computer?

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/51/$307652 (BTW, the web version seems broken for most people. Beware!)

Hope ya like it. I guess, for posterity, I produced a decent amount of content for this project, except for the fonts, emojis, some special effects sprites, and a couple really tender audio clips from freesound. I also did not make the art tools. Or the operating system. Or this world we live in. But the narrative, scripting, audio production, and visuals (thanks Blender and Krita)... well, I focused a lot more on the visuals and music because that's what feels good right now, so Sunday afternoon and Monday morning was basically trying to put in a little bit more effort to pull at least something, maybe, a tiny bit more interactive together.

Take care, feel free to give me a comment and I'll check your game out.

Hi. I used a lot of affordable tools, plugins, and open-source code and content for my submission this weekend. In this post, I want to talk about the audio tools and recordings I used to get started on this weekend's jam. There really are some incredible works of art available for free online, or even open-source. I strongly believe software is art.

I came home a couple hours after the beginning of the jam and opened Reaper, my current Digital Audio Workstation of choice. Reaper is a very powerful and affordable tool. I have only been using it for less than a year, and I have already grown so much as an artist. I have been very pleased with the frequent bug-fix updates, and look forward to diving more into plugins and custom UIs for it eventually.

Its developers distribute not only Linux builds, but ARM Linux builds as well. These builds seem fully functional on a Raspberry Pi. I've used it with Jack and PipeWire and not experienced much difficulty. As far as I can tell, it's the same program. That is truly awesome.

Adding the fact that you can build your own FX chains out of both free and commercial VSTs, LV2 plugins, and more, the possibilities are endless.

The thing is, I didn't think I was going to have the time or energy to participate. I haven't submit to LD since 2012. A lot has changed. But a good friend told me he and his friends had put together a team and he'd be making audio. His interest and enthusiasm really inspired me to mess around, too.

The thing is, my focus has been incredibly scattered the past year. I feel awful about it. My body fails me, my mind fails me, and everything feels terrible. I'm grieving. I'm healing. I'm trying to keep holding on. I decided to give myself some time to just mess around and make something goofy for the 51st jam.

In fact, writing this blog post is pretty exhausting, so here's a simple credits list for the clips and instruments I found instrumental (heh) in the production of 10Y Lost, 10M Lives Regained.

pyttsx3. I found this very usable with espeak on MS Windows via WSL. I'm thankful for the tools that let us use Linux development environments on Windows. Random audio plugin developers I am very grateful to: Cockos, Auburn Sounds, Glitchmachines, Wavesfactory, Valhalla DSP, Modartt, Spitfire Audio, Dreamtonics (and Eclipsed Sounds, and their collaborators)...

I also love the community at freesound. Artists whose recordings I used to add some layering and atmosphere to my tracks include: felix-blume, enricoviets, lordforklift, and the following artists' work to quickly throw together some last minute sound effects to work into the "ending" (can you call it that?) in 10Y: joelaudio, hoscalegeek, michael-grinnell, egomassive, strangehorizon... elise-admina, straget, buddyguytrask... all wonderful artists whose work released under the CC0 license I am so grateful for. Without their heartfelt, thoughtful, and creative work, I would not have been able to tie together even such a simple game on such limited physical and mental energy.

Anyway, peace. Thanks to all these contributors. I hope to talk more about the code and visual art tools used in future posts.