This is my first game jam, and really first attempt at making a game. Had been intending to enter LD since 41, but now is when I finally feel like I have enough knowledge to be able to make a decent attempt at whatever theme gets thrown our way. Hoping for the best!
I feel like I've gotten off to a good start. The theme is one of the options I was voting for, and I've figured out an interesting way to implement it. At this point, I've implemented most of the core mechanic of the game, and I'm at a point where I feel good about the state of the project. Time to get some sleep and get ready to implement the rest of the core mechanic and start adding things to it, such as level design, enemies/AI, etc.
Veterans of Ludum Dare...do you think I should explain more of the game and its mechanics? My thinking was to not say much about what I'm working on (to allow players more chance to discover the game), but I'm not sure if this is in the best interests of cooperative spirit. What would you advise?
Have a good night, all! I'll be back at 'em tomorrow! (Well, later today, my time. :P )
Today was a slow day. I didn't make as much progress as I was hoping to, and I wasted three hours trying to implement a new engine feature that wasn't really needed and wasn't integral to the game at all. I felt like I spent a tremendous amount of time today on not a lot of progress. I think this is because I didn't plan out my next steps much and relied on just jumping from one thing to the next.
I think another contributing factor was not really spending much time thinking about what the point of the game was. I had a core mechanic, but no narrative, no objective to go with it. As of now, I think I have the core game loop nailed down in conception, but I still need to build the prototype; the narrative is coming along, and it's at the point where I think I know what I want to do with it.
Time to get some sleep. Tomorrow, I plan to finish the core loop demo, and then build more of it out from there. I also plan to spend more time planning my next moves so I don't get caught working aimlessly again. We'll see how that works out.
From my question last night, I decided that yes, I do want to share more of what my game is about, but not before I have the core loop demo in place and I have the concepts solidly nailed down. I changed things slightly from where I was going last night, so I want to be sure I have the ideas solidly in place before publicly announcing them.
Hopefully tomorrow is a better day!
I finished the core loop and got things basically working, but there's nowhere near enough polish to consider this a finished game. Definitely a lot of lessons to be learned from this, and I enjoyed the overall experience (even if I'm not entirely satisfied with the end result). So ends my first attempt at Ludum Dare.
Here it is: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/sanity-wars
I ran out of time to include UI for some spells in my game. Would it be allowed as an update to go back and put that in, or would that be against the spirit of updates? I read the rules and it says "bug fixes" are allowed, but I'm not sure a missing graphical component that is technically missing because I forgot to add it would be considered a "bug".
I originally wanted to wait until after the contest was over before making my postmortem post, to fully capture the experience. The rest of the delay was purely procrastination and focusing on other priorities.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy the read! It was a very emotional experience making this game, and I wanted to share that journey with you all.
http://joshanthony.info/2019/02/06/post-mortem-ludum-dare-43/
In for my second Ludum Dare. This time, my wife will join me, drawing the art. We hope to put out a good effort!
After three grueling days of development, PixelLunatic (my wife) and I (AspiringGameDev) are proud to announce that we have released version 1.0 of our game: Impact!
Play it now: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/$139656
Available on web and Windows.