I’m actually having a stage fright 😀

I plan to use:

• Unity 5 personal edition with C#
• Pencil and paper, phone’s camera and GIMP2 for graphics
• Microphone, anything available at arms length, Milkytracker & Audacity for audio and music
• Sublime2 for writing notes…?

Hopefully see you on the other side .) Now excuse me, I’m going to stock up on coffee and food, and make that lair I call home a bit less messy so I have a place to work at.

BTW: Any logistic hints for a first timer? .)

“So… we found this thing deep down in the Atlantis a few days back. Brought it in to make some research on it. And since yesterday, we’re under attack. Lights in the sky, flying saucers, EMPs, electronics don’t work, our defenses are useless. That kind of stuff. Personally, I think they’re pissed we stole their ride.”

I’ve got a decent idea for gameplay. No name for the game yet though…

Part 1

“Climb in Geepee*! I managed to start it up. It’s steam powered, so it’s still working!”
…
“I’m in the cockpit. Over…”
“Well then? Get moving! Over…”
“Give me a sec… What the hell is this?! Levers? Valves? And this… Is that a bloody flusher?!”
“Calm down Geepee. We need to make it work. Over…”
“And how am I supposed to do that? There are at least seven control elements in here. How am I supposed to work it? It looks like this thing was made for a goddamn steampunk centipede… *sigh* … over …”
“RTFM noob. Over…”
“No FM to R here. You got any on you? Over…”
“Not really… Okay, whatever! Just pull something and see what happens. I’m in the machine room of this thing. Looks like some gears are stuck. I’ll try to make everything work again, figure out the controls in the meantime. Over…”
“Great…”
“What? Over…”
“I’ve got a visual. E.T. Over…”
“Really? What does it look like? Over…”
“Like it was drawn by someone who didn’t have time to do it properly. It really needs redoing. Over..”
“No time for that now. Maybe tommorrow. Now… get to work!”
“You forgot to say over Gees**.”

*Stands for GP as in Generic Protagonist. But in this universe, it’s a real name. I promise!
*Stands for GS as in Generic Sidekick. But in this universe, this also is a real name. I swear!

So… seven hours in. I managed to do some “art” and anims, but no code yet. This is actually the thing I was warned about, to do placeholder art only, avoid killing lot of time with complicated art. But nevermind. I’m starting right now!

I don’t know how to export a vid properly, so this is the best I could do in a hurry.

I decided the focus of the gameplay will be trying to create an impresson of controlling an ancient high tech steam powered battle device, with confusing controls and no manual. I’ve yet to see if I can manage something playable in time.

The second problem is, that while it seems like a good, fun idea in my head, it might come out as an annoying BS mechanics that’ll make most people stop playing before they make the bot make its first step. But I guess we won’t know that until it’s finished and playable.

Let’s get back to work. Good luck everybody .)

Though I made my submission yesterday ( and on time! yay! ), I spent today trying to fix that damn bug that made it freeze in web browsers. But I’m finally done, and leaving you with the fruit of my labor.

This is what Atlantis Warmachine celebrating victory looks like.

It was a long weekend. Many hours awake, many papers scribbled, many cigs smoked, many cofees and sodas drinked, many shorter or longer conversations with fellow gamedevs had.

Though this was my first LD ever, It was an experience to remember. I actually finished and released a game. It has no sound or music ( though it tries to mask it with an “ancient technology” notification right at the beginning ). It has no menu, background is improvised, enemy types are distinguished by color, and the dialogue system looks kind of DOS-ish as well. But it is out. First game ever to see the light of the day, after years an years of starting and killing project after project. Anyone familiar with a “troubled lazy perfectionist” mindset will understand the value it holds to me. It can’t be described, and it only took two days ( Two and half, including the web bug removal ).

I can’t thank enough to everyone on Ludum Dare. I played many great games here ( and am keeping them! I’m gonna make that serpent in Archimagic sorry, even if it kills me ), chat with amazing people, laughed hard ( sometimes way too hard ), and now it’s over. I need to sleep, and then find out if anyone in my life from before LD remembers me. The last two days felt like a year. And an amazing one at that.

You people are amazing! Kudos!

P.S.: my spoils of war; Atlantis Warmachine

I could use some heavier feedback on the art style of my game (pretty please). I grew up with hand drawn games, so I'm heavily biased, and find it almost impossible to be objective. Also I did all assets in a rush, so the art is far from perfect, I realize, but would like to know what disturbs you, or if something does or doesn't work well together, etc, the more, the merrier. Any nitpicks, improvement tips, or anything of sorts would be very welcome. Many thanks, here's the game

And a video

yt

Put your hands in the air if you look forward to LD as much as you used to to Christmas when you were a kid. I know I'm not alone here.

I'm considering doing a story-wise "sequel" of previous LD's 'passion of a peasant'. The story, and especially the plot were idiotic AF, but I had lot of fun making it, so why not...

It took me over 20 minutes to go through these few.

I'm not dying here of theme slaughter today!

I feeel like I want to play games, as well as make something constrained by a more 'aesthetic' theme this time around. Although there are a few rather mechanic oriented ones I'd like as well. Let the crowd decide. Here's my two pennies worth.

THE HYPE IS REAL!

Let it be saturday already...

Peace out :v:

I'd like to know what codebase y'all'll be using this LD. I've always started in unity from scratch with a fresh project previous LDs, but according to rules, you don't have to. (also, TIL y'all'll's a thing)

I was thinking of setting some movement system, background, and stuff like this up ahead.

What do you guys think? Are you going to prepare you base gameplay ahead of time, and then work on assets, theme aspects, etc.? Or you gonna wait for theme, and then decide what type of game you want to do?

Do you think it's even ok to prepare code like this up ahead?

Cheers

p.s.: THE HYPE IS REAL! :heart:

As I couldn't finish the game the last time, I'm really looking forward to LD47. I feel like after four LDs and one DJam I more or less understand what's the most enjoyable workflow for me in a 48h game jam.

I'll leave some thoughts on the whole process here. Feel free to discuss .)

1. Scope

I always think too far ahead, making up systems far too complex for 48 hours. I think that's okay, as long as you can keep yourself in check and finish the damn thing, but I tried to make a Darkest Dungeon clone for LD 46 and it didn't go that well. I tried to finish it in time for jam, but it was unbalanced, and the gameplay was hard to understand.

One way that paradoxically improved the overall quality of my work was constraining my timeframe to 20 hours. I did this for DJam4 in 19 hours or so. I used stock audio, so maybe I'll focus more on that this time, since it really improved the overall quality and feeling of the game. In the end, I like that last game a lot more than all my previous submissions.

So this time I'm making something that I can finish in 20 hours or so, and then use the remaining day to polish it.

2. Avoid crunch

This might sound silly since the whole LD is kind of a crunch simulator, but it goes with the whole "constraint your time". I spent the whole 48 hours of past LDs, with about 6-8 hours of sleep, and found that I'm not really able to work efficiently for a month or two after LD. I avoided the burnout after DJam4, and not being strung with anxiety for the whole weekend makes it more enjoyable, not to mention I actually finished the game, and was quite satisfied with the result. Keep the game as simple as possible, and then relax and polisih.

3. Prepare yourself

I'm talking about pre-LD preparations. Like clean your table, stock up on food, and then decide what technologies you'll use. Prepare your libs in a new project (I work with Unity), and practice drawing what you know how to draw a few days before LD, so you can make assets quickly. I've heard it's a good idea to have menus and fonts ready as well, but I think I'm a bit too disorganized to manage that.

4. People and stuff

I like to hang around the LD discord voice chat. I don't talk much, but I like to listen. It's one of the best part of the whole LD. I'd probably wouldn't participate if there wasn't a community this strong. But it's also good to mute the chat from time to time if you want to get anything done.

5. Balance trying new things and doing things you know how to do

I like to try some small new thing on each LD, but also do and use things I did many times before. It improves the overall quality, and takes a lot less time to do what you know how to do.

6. Theme

I don't think too hard on the theme. I make up a few ideas, pick one, and make it happen. Sometimes it's better, sometimes it's worse. I never manage to fully realize it anyway, so I just make the best game I can, and it's more than enough for me.

Okay, enough of me rambling. Let's go already!

THE HYPE IS REAL

Unity, Krita, LMMS, & Audacity

HYPE.

Let's go already!

What is hype?

Baby don't hurt me...

HYPE

Hype!

hype...

Don't let them fool you

I'm making the simplest game I could come up with, but somehow still feel like I overscoped. Damn you Compo...

I finally got around to making this post (I was playing your games :smile: )

My entry: Another

Although I could nit-pick my own work, I'm quite happy with the result.

The original idea was a little bit more complex. 6 game jams in, and I still can't accurately estimate the amount of work I'm able to do in 48 hours - but that might be because each game jam is an unique experience.

This time, I decided to implement a simple mechanic, and then polish the game for the rest of the compo. It came out looking something like this:

The game mechanic was supposed to include several rounds of loops of attack sequences with special occurences happening: pick ups appearing, different enemies, different attack types and so on. There would be a pick up that would contain instructions to break out of a loop and advance into the next one. If you pay attention, you can see that the attack patterns repeat ad infinum - a gameplay system that was quite time consuming to implement, but it didn't get used in the end.

Originally, the attacks were carried out using the mouse. It took me one run with WASD bound to specific "enemy limbs" to abandon mouse controls completely. The game might have worked better with a longer pause between dodge and attack phase, but I didn't want to loose the rhytmic aspect - I even considered making the characters dance to the tune, but after I used this ambient placeholder music, I decided on more darker/surreal music and overall tone. Too bad I can't make something like this yet - it worked really well with the game. Maybe next time?

| --- | --- |

So after implementing the basic gameplay mechanic, I didn't add anything else. I decided I'd polish the hell out of what I had, and then implement the theme based loop mechanic if there was any time left (of course there wasn't). So the only thing that refers to the theme is that the "story" (6 lines of text) hints on repeating itself forever.

One thing that really surprises me is that I found no bugs so far - even after implementing player respawn, which in my case always breaks everything. So if you find any bugs please let me know.

It might sound childish, but my biggest regret is not leaving the original title screen, which looked like this.

I think it looks better than the actual one, but compo is over, and I'll refrain for doing any changes (although it pains me to do so).

So this is the end of my rambling. Leave a comment letting me know what you think on the game page. I'll make sure to like it, since that's obviously what counts for smart balance and your game's visibility in the default sorting these days (AFAIK the number of games you rated don't count so much anymore - if at all; but I might be wrong).

# Also leave your games here in the comments. I still wanna play some more.

Cheers

It's called Virtual Chicken Staring Contest

(Yes. You read that right. I lold for the whole game. Case in point for beauty in simplicity.)

also a shameless plug of my compo game | link here --- | --- |

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/another

Today I finished the post-compo version of my submission, Another

I remade the title screen, made a few changes to the rhythm of the game so it would feel more natural, and revamped the UI. Also “the deep ambient noise” that people said they liked was actually a music track that wasn’t finished properly, and was quite silent in the game. So I did some work on the music as well. I hope you’ll like the new and improved Another.

Check it out here if you feel like it :heart:

I've pretty much finished the post compo version of my entry.

I'm going to start expanding on it, but first there's an urgent need to organize and clean up the abomination that is my compo code. Wish me luck, please? .)

There's this thing I should have seen coming.

From the comments on my game:

... the deep ambient noise fits the art and mood very well!

... the ambient sound serves the mood well.

The thing is, I didn't listen to the music once I exported it from LMMS. I did some last minute volume tweaks, and put it in the compo version. So it ended up sounding like an ambient hum.

So. I revamped the music for the post compo version. Here it is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxRVP3g2y3s