Shows me playing with some success, the secret of destroying adult viruses revealed, closest thing to tutorial I have so far. Open on youtube to see timeline of events. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iy6NgMdh2A

(personal opinion begins) ...theme democracy sucks. I keep seeing the least exciting themes swim up to finals. Feel free to disagree but I'm starting to think LD may have attracted a lot of people who don't understand LD spirit, and who are upvoting themes which will improve their chances of "winning" rather than ones which will challenge them as game designers. Worst themes fall into two categories: 1) themes which define genre or gameplay more than they should, 2) themes which are seen to often in commercial published games. Best themes are the ones which are just an idea, a word or two or a sentence not related to gameplay.

Also, did you ever had a feeling that there might be such a thing as "Ludum Dare theme mafia", groups of developers&friends who organize into upvoting themes which will suit them rather than ones which will challenge them? Call me paranoid, I would agree. Anyway, good luck everyone and have fun on this upcoming LD.

Why do I do this to myself?

Btw, if anyone has a ready, decent looking and rigged model to share, consider me a beggar.

Hello ludum darers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4NVV-na-gA&feature=youtu.be

I don't see myself finishing this in time, but I'll keep cracking at it.

The good news is I managed to find the treasure, tho I was starting to think it is an impossible task, as the treasure is undetectable by sonar and you have to use your eyes. It turned out you can recognize it by it being the only emitter of particles in the game world, though from distance it is hard to distinguish it from dark background. It is useful to invest in Used to Darkness perk which improves your night vision. The treasure is somewhere between depth level 44 and ???

The bad news is nothing happened when I found the treasure, the sequence didn't fire, so I fixed the problem and uploaded the fixed version, but anyone who has downloaded the game prior to six hours ago should re-download it again, in case they want to have a version of game with working winning condition. On the bright side, the remaining two endings (having hull crushed or running out of power) work perfectly.

Btw this screenshot has nothing to do with me finding treasure.

Putting this up since people were confused about how to read sonar properly. Explaining it is kind of hard but understanding it is easy, once you catch on you'll wonder how you ever lived without it. The system is taken from Elite/Frontier series which used exact same system to describe position of objects in 3D space relative to your vehicle. Dots on radar are positioned in 3D, but to help you understand where each dot really is, there is the green plane and white lines. The green plane is always at your altitude and the center of it is your vehicle's position. Each white line is connected to it's dot on one end, and to the plane on other. These lines extrude up from their dot if the object is below you, or down from the dot if the object is above you, and it's length helps you understand the object's altitude compared to yours.

Weather in Belgrade will drop below zero this weekend, perfect time for game development. As nature gets frozen the energy escapes into spiritual realms and inspiration runs rampant, also who would want to go out when it's sub zero outside. This time I'm hoping to maybe make something cheerful, or story driven at least, depends how the theme works out for me.

Beautiful theme this LD, too bad I had a very late start and decided to go with a simple rather than some ground breaking attempt of an idea. Eventually I came up with what I can do, and as you can see pieces are starting to fall in.

A minimal example of pulling through when block are starting to pile up in awkward ways. Of course there are worse cases of clutter than this, but with some faith and fast reaction anything is possible.

Hello, a question for someone more experienced with Compo category. I'm 99.9% sure I have labeled the game as a Compo game before publishing. All within rules and none of the builds I uploaded have been altered since compo ended. Yet today I find the game labeled as Jam. Sooo, I either managed to somehow make a mistake while uploading the game, or there is some sort of authority which checked and decided, for some reason, that the game doesn't belong in Compo category (I don't know why would that happen though). So I guess my question is, is there in fact some authority which checks entries and may have changed the category, or it is just me messing up?

Please, spend more time with LD and take part in more LD events, and observe, before proposing radical changes and restricting rules. You may end up surprised to learn how many issues which are and will be grinding your gears now are not really issues at all, but a small price to pay for having such a great, chilled and freedom-loving event.

Also thank you for taking up frustrating task of slaughtering themes, it is thanks to your hard work that each LDer gets to propose up to three themes and not less. Cheers!

The truth about really good themes, the ones which pass all the sanity checks, is that each theme will inspire only a limited percentage of people. So there is no perfect theme, you will feel inspired or not based on your inner world, thought patterns and memories.

Those who do not feel inspired by a theme will oversize theme's flaws to make it look like the theme does not pass sanity checks. I think a better way would be to try harder at finding inspiration instead.

Step 1 - Be aware that your Theme Voting screen, full of -1s, is still editable

Step 2 - Pick a random theme from the list

Step 3 - Start thinking, but really thinking out of the box, like never before.

Heavily reexamine what you thought was obvious, for example:

Does "1 minute" really needs to mean a one minute time limit imposed on the player?

Does "One Enemy Only" really mean a character which your hero must kill?

Does "Two Points of View" really has to be about two cameras? Does the player even has to see other point of view?

And so on... Attack and reexamine the thoughts which seem most obvious to you.

Step 4 - If you manage to find some inspiration, change the theme's mark from -1 to 1, that way you will help this theme overlap and increase the chance of it getting selected rather than some theme you really don't like. This way you're making more difference than back when you had a big column of -1s.

That is my advice to those who feel the themes are restrictive, as for those who feel they are too broad I can't think of a way to help you. I feel broad themes are good, and how much an author respected the theme will be reflected in his Theme score.

As a final note, I'm far from happy with theme selection as well, but I know all dissatisfaction with the selected theme will disappear when I grab the thread of inspiration and start working on it, LD is always worth it.

After giving up on the concept five times, this thing is still alive and crawling towards release.

It'll be a Jam as main character is generated in Makehuman, and I could use some of that extra day.

Good luck all you compo people with finishing your releases.

I went Preview before clicking Save, and ended up losing the entire post, be careful this may happen to you. Big thank you to a program called Process Hacker for helping me recover the entire post from the memory, I couldn't be arsed to write it all again otherwise.

Useless superpowers -1 - Yes just force the whole story line on me

Break the cycle +1 - Good theme, can cover a wide range of genres, also can be interpreted in both extremely safe and extremely experimental ways

Don't trust the game -1 - Don't want to see a bunch of joke games

Absorb your enemies -1 - Was tempted to give it zero. Though it can be interpreted in several ways, as a whole it is lacking pieces to make an all around good theme

No killing allowed -1 - Who said anything about killing?

One item, many uses -1 - Great theme for one game, bad for thousands

You are the princess waiting to be rescued in the castle -1 - How did this theme even survive the slaughter? Quick, my pistol! Shame on all of us, after all that bragging of slaughter well done. It would be funny if I couldn't think of 10 good themes which didn't survive the slaughter because of this piece of crap. In case you don't see problem(s): it defines the story, the setting, and the main character, AND what she does, and with which motive, very funny.

Take one, leave one 0 - My wisdom stops here.

Scavenger +1 - Not my favorite but something I can live with, decent potential for interpretation, if too many games end up in a similar setting blame the pop culture.

Control the environment, not the player 0 - It is a good theme in a way but defines genre too much, you can even say it is a bad theme for LD. But I'd rather have it than some other themes so not going with -1.

Indirect Combat -1 - Who said anything about combat? Tbh I can live with this theme, and sure it can be interpreted, but my guts tell me -1.

You're the final boss -1 - Keep your great game ideas to yourself, I don't want to play through 1000 versions of your game.

Permanent damage -1 - On first sight this is just game mechanics for a limited amount of genres, on a second thought the potential for story writers is great. But apart from mechanics for action games and potential for story driven games about people getting psychologically hurt, or some environmental thing, it lacks pieces to be an all around good theme, -1

Automation 0 - Can live with, hope it doesn't win.

Discovery +1 - Maybe this theme is lacking for those who wish to have their gameplay mechanics very much limited by a theme, but in general it is a good and inspiring theme which can be interpreted in number of ways, and inventive people might even come up with a gameplay related interpretation.

It only changes when you aren't looking -1 - Not a horrible theme but I feel some people may actually quit the event if it wins.

Yes.

This is the first time I attempted an entirely story based game. First time using Twine as well.

I noticed audio works only on Chrome. Any tips for flawlessly publishing a game with Twine 2?

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/death-of-sultan-murad

..I think.

Soon the post-jam version will be out, and I won't be embarrassed to advertise my entry anymore. Also I'll have more time to play and rate other games.

Apologies to the pretty post below, for pushing it down with this crap.

I believe to have finally ironed out two principles which would summarize how I approach Ludum Dare in past, present and future.

1 - Create a world wonder

2 - Do it in laziest possible way

That is all there is to it.

Of course, in reality..

3 - Work like mad on details that next to no one will notice or appreciate

4 - Get depressed over all the things I couldn't achieve in time

5 - Ponder if I should have just made some squares shoot at each other or something

But I be damned if I'm not having tons of fun every time.