I have a dozen games suffering from ballooning scope. Now that I have a deadline I'll be sure to keep it small and get it done for once. I'll be using Unity, Blender, Piskel, GIMP, Audacity, LMMS and SFXR mostly. Have fun everyone!

Good news is it looks like I'll finish my game. Bad news is that it won't be for the Compo. I'm still proud of all I accomplished and how it's shaping up and finishing a game is what it's all about. Going to hunker down and get it polished for the Jam.

I think it's time to call it done!

Now for my personal take on the game: Really happy with all the mechanics and features I jammed in and for a programmer I don't think the graphics are too bad. Audio works but a lack of music is sad. Level design is one of the worst conceptually. I had planned for the maze to be a starter area with only a few enemies and the rest of the game to open up with more room and enemies. Unfortunately the crunch happened so I loaded up the remaining big rooms with enemies and never got to the other areas. This means that you lose the horde in the tight hallways and it kind of defeats the point, plus it ramps the difficulty a bit as it stopped being a starter area and became the whole game. I actually haven't had the time to play through it without cheating since those changes so it might not be possible. That being said there's the theme for you, the more enemies you have (on your side or not) the worse it is (literally)!

But hey I got it done and out there and that's more than I can say for my other projects so I give it a 5/7, perfect. I'm looking forward to putting some meat on this project and expand upon the content I was hoping to get into the game. Then I'm going to apply what I've learned to my other projects and finish them as well, and join in on any future Ludum Dares I can! I had fun with my first, and I'm already looking forward to the next one.

Thanks for reading and playing!

This will be my second Ludum Dare since starting with 40. Had a lot changing in my life for a while so I've had to sit a few out. Looking forward to getting back into it, hopefully for the next few as well.

I'll be using mostly the same tools as last time. Unity, Piskel, Blender, beepbox.co and Audacity. I'd like to move to a different engine but I won't have time to learn a new one beforehand. Maybe for 44. I will probably only use Blender lightly since I anticipate going 2d again but we'll see.

My goals are similar as well. I'm going to continue to practice planning and maintaining manageable scope. I won't have as much time on Monday to continue working so I will have to take making the Compo more seriously this time. Here's hoping for a theme compatible with minimalism.

glhf

I can safely say that I am very proud with my second Ludum Dare entry.

Yeah the end was stressful as it always is and yeah there could be more polish all around and yeah it turned out a little homoerotic and sure it's debatable whether builds are considered needed to be created within the time limit (I would argue against it) but in the end it seems a lot more well put together than my last entry.

This time around I approached things in a different order. During LD 40 I went ham on assets right out the gate. I got a few characters, basic animations, and environments to play with. I wound up crunching on getting all the mechanics in and ultimately leaving the level design almost entirely neglected.

This time I coded first using placeholders. I was able to really nail down the mechanics and the feel I wanted. I made a few enemies with different behaviors and some toggleable geometry. I would have kept refining if I hadn't realized I spent my whole first day already and had no other assets to my name! I woke up the next day in a heavy sweat thinking about everything I'd have to make.

I got music and sfx out of the way first since those also suffered last time. I decided to skip handmade animations in favor of "animating" by manipulating the objects in Unity. This was ultimately faster, however looks worse and had a bit of overhead from figuring it out. All the while fixing and modifying the code I wrote yesterday. Unfortunately once again level design came up last and suffers, but there are arguably 3 (counting the tutorial and finale as one) distinct levels each with a dialog interlude between so overall I'm happy with the results. I almost forgot about the grace hour and just made squeezing in a fix to the third level's geometry so you could actually beat it.

I didn't have the best schedule this time around, unlike the near constant attention I gave the last one. If I could do it again I would have planned that better. I would have also made a quick estimated time budget to stick to so I wouldn't burn an entire day on one facet. I was hoping to come up with a more minimalistic idea this time to help as well but there was a kink in the creative juice line and I got stuck to one idea. With better planning, more sleep and relaxation beforehand I may have came up with something better.

All that being said the dang thing has grown on me.

good job everyone, gg no re

I guess I have a habit of skipping two jams between contributions now :shrug: maybe only having two per year will sync up better for me!

Anyway goals for myself are to continue refining my time management to make more rounded entries and to hopefully throw together a ~~blocky~~ abstract 3D game for a change this time, theme permitting. I'll probably use the same stack of tools as before even though I said I'd switch to Godot. Shooting for another Compo submission, wish me luck!

Tools: - Engine: Unity - IDE: Visual Studio - Modeling: Blender - Textures: Piskel(if 2D)/Paint/GIMP idk depends how I feel tbh - Audio: beepbox.co/SFXR/Audacity(maybe)

Have fun peeps, can't wait to play your games! :smile:

A Change in Pace

The game I submitted to LD45 was a departure from what I had developed for previous jams. I decided to focus on puzzle-y mechanics and an unobstructive story over action. I wanted to elicit a similar kind of feeling that other 'adventure' games have given me, most being point and clicks. I also went in a more abstract direction in terms of art style, at least for the opening, as well as the story as a whole. Most of my work however can be classified as abstract though not often by intention.

I also changed how I worked on the game and focused on core movement feel and basic mechanics initially for a prototyping sequence that is more accurate to larger game development. I managed to not take too much time with modeling even though UV mapping is something that I had little to no real experience with beforehand. I think most of my lost time came from bugs and red herrings that stem from not having experience with Unity in 3D.

Stumbles Along the Way

In my eyes, given the time frame I am pleased with the result. Putting myself in the shoes of someone who didn't make the game I can feel some faint sense of discovering a new world and intrigue from piecing together a story. Obviously my imitation of a new player is not perfect and the game has many problems that get in the way. The abstract style also may be doing the game more harm than good. Intimately knowing the world and the message makes it very difficult to see them objectively.

I greatly underestimated the need of a tutorial. When I approach low-quality indie games such as my own, I must be in the habit of trying all keys/buttons and approaching it from a sort of QA-style exhaustive view when things aren't coming together. The beginning of the game is intentionally opaque, but the lack of an in-game control map or basic tutorial objective messages made this impassable for the average player. I did design the section to be a tutorial since it requires the player to hit most of the important buttons to get through it, but results speak louder than intentions.

Even with all the shortcomings I still feel that by going a different direction I grew as a developer and I am glad to have had the opportunity while I am a Ludum Dare participant. My other two entries share a lot in common with themselves and some of my other non-LD projects. Making a game that isn't action-oriented, or 2D pixelart sprite based, or topdown/sidescroller has given me what feels like good experience.

Themes, Themes Everywhere...

...But Nothing to Drink

48 hours to complete a game for the 48th Ludum Dare. Although I'm a late and inconsistent contributor, I'm still excited to celebrate 19 years of jamming. I'll be shooting for the compo again, hope I can make it!

Best luck to everyone's themes in the slaughter! Wish I had come up with something as creative as this:

Gonna try for the Compo again, hoping for a good final round of theme voting. I'll be using Godot, Blender, GIMP and/or Piskel, SFXR, beepbox.co and/or Audacity.

Glad the theme has been inspirational for most of you. I have been stuck on coming up with anything for it though. 18 hours in and I don't have anything to show, I doubt it'll change anytime soon.

I played around with trying to get some physics based prototypes working. Hardly any of them worked let alone seemed interesting enough to pursue. Frankly I don't even know why I participate in these anymore.

Hope you find more enjoyment out of this jam than I have.

Goodbye.