I’m happy to say that I managed to submit my first Ludum Dare compo game late last night: Bush Craft!

I was a little thrown off with the theme in the beginning as it was simply not restrictive enough; and I had no idea what kind of game I should make.  It seemed to me the theme would be more meaningful if it was interpreted as ‘Entire Game on One Screen [… which usually would be on many]’.  So I decided to take the survival genre and reduce the massive expanses of land and vistas and get it all on the screen at once.

I used Java and AWT and made a very Notch-esque game (low-fidelity).  Unfortunately I spent a LOT of time in the first day trying to get alpha blending to work properly, which I couldn’t so I ditched it and just used color copying.  Then on the second day I was running so short of time I didn’t manage to create an music for the game.  Bxfr came to the rescue though and I was able to add basic sounds before submitting the game.  There were a few other features which I began but ultimately had to abandon due to lack of time.  The first was a retro style CRT post effect, then there was weather effects to mess up your temp reading some more (its current difficult to die from temp) and the last features were more things to do at night.  In the end I decide to speed the night up as you cannot see anything without lights.

I’ll spend a little time tonight fixing the help text (incorrect instructions) and I’ll upload the time-lapse to YouTube.

Despite the few minor setbacks, it was a fun event I hope to attend again next time,

Thanks and have fun playing.

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My  BushCraft time lapse for the 48hr Compo has finally finished uploading and processing and the link now nicely accompanying my entry page.  As this was a weekend of firsts (first submission, compo) so too is  this my first time-lapse video and in my opinion the result is well worth the minimal extra extra capturing the footage (the number of times I stopped and forgot to restart Chronolapse though).

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This will be my 4th LD. and this time Ieven took a day off work so I can join in with the Jam.
I’m hoping the extra day and a LD Library I’ve been  working on will help me to finish a game with slightly more polish than my last attempts.

Platform: Android
Language: Java
Libs: AndEngine / LDLibrary
Base Code: AndEngine sorts me out with a game loop, opengl and a scenegraph. My LDLibrary provides me with a game screen manager and XNA-like game flow
Graphics: Paint.NET
Sound: no idea

The LD has been running already for a little over 9 hours, and I am only now getting started with the IDE and environment setup. I don’t feel too bad this time round though as I have already spent some time thinking out a project which I *think* is attainable!

You will be growing an army’s borders with supply lines, kind of like a tower defense, but also a little different.

Notes:

Finally decided I’ll be taking a break from the university this weekend and joining in the fun.

For the first time I think I’m going to be using Unity so I can try and concentrate on ‘gameplay’ instead of game functionality which is where I usually spend the first day.

I’ve just woken up, and seen the theme which sounds pretty cool

This will be my 5th Ludum Dare, but more excitingly for me, this will be the first LD without any guilty feelings of “I should be studying” as I just graduated. So now, minus any distraction from my kids, I should be looking at a nice couple of days of solid game dev

I’ll be using:

• Java w/ Eclipse
• LWJGL3 / OpenAL
• Paint.net
• Abundant Music (haven’t used this before, but looks simple enough).

In the past I created and tried to maintain a small library project on github with basic boiler plate code for LWJGL. The idea is to get started on the day much quicker, so I don’t need to do things like texture loading, sprite rendering and setting up shaders. The library isn’t complete and not particularly well coded, but if I get time this week I think I’ll try and add to it.  The project location is:

LDLibrary https://github.com/LintfordPickle/Java-LDLibraryGL

Woke up a little late, but now have a manageable  theme planned: Tank Crew Commander: A Lá FTL.

Well that’s all I have so far

The first screenshot which looks as it should for the submission. Not all the game mechanics are working yet, and I will have again have to cut back on many things.

The two big things to be added before submission are our tank still doesn’t fire yet and end game conditions need checking. After that, its time to add the environment objects and particles. I would love to have a LD Compo where I can spend more than 20 minutes tacking sound in – but alas, I don’t think this will be the time.

Final stretch now

Unfortunately I missed the deadline for the 48hour compo submission. Although progress has been pretty great, there just wasn’t enough game play to warrant releasing it. Instead, after work today I’m going to try and add some basic objectives which uses the current game mechanics and create a jam submission.

Yay, really stoked! Lets get started

After about 2 hours I've finally got my game idea - and what's more, I think I may even be able to finish the game in time!

A Small (Post-ApoC) World

You play as a military commander and have to save the world - a la missile command style. You can move the screen left and right and the world under you rotates. There will also be some small resource management like the Kingdoms games, sending drones out and getting people to do work.

Let's see how far I get this time ..

Good Luck!

.. to both make and post these awesome screenshots?

This time round (my 7th LD), I thought I'd give Rami Ismail's 4:44 approach a shot (with slightly changed proportions) - but alias, even after 14 hours of making the core mechanics I still don't have everything in and I have yet to really concentrate on art and music.

I've seen some awesome projects on LDJam.com so far, so keep up the great work.

Day #2 starts for me now, on what I think will become a wipeout-esque top-down racer ..

I also found some great looking pixel art tutorials by Pedro Medeiros while breaking fast, so that'll be something I'll be working on later :)

Tachyon-R: A brutally fast futuristic racing game. Tearing around the narrow tracks at breakneck speeds can be deadly enough, but factor in the opponents and it becomes insane - 'more [opponents] you have, the worse it is ..'

I'm extremely happy with how this compo worked out and with what I achieved. I've long ago giving up the idea of finishing a complete and fun game within the 48 hour limit, as this just seems way too difficult for me. Instead this time I've concentrated on a genre of game I've never attempted before: a racing game.

I used a library which I have been building up over the last 7-8 Ludum Dares and this time around I did have to expand it a little (collision/response code mostly) and fix old issues. Despite this, I still managed to get a full track generator, track/car physics and a crude A.I. racing around. The challenge of the game is definitely shallow: simply finish the track without exploding - but it works! and it would be a good starting point for a more complete game.

There are a few things missing which I initially planned: weapons and pickups being the main things, as well as some fast electronic music. The hand-brake controls feel surprising satisfying but unfortunately, there is nowhere in the game to really test them out. As usual, I left too little time to do any decent graphics and I totally neglected soundFX/music (the only music is from Incomputech: of course I disabled the sound rating).

There is definitely a lot of room to expand on this game in coming weeks: pickups, weapons being the obvious missing components to make this a proper 2d wipeout clone - and better track generation with loops, intersections and jump would be cool. There are a few little bugs in the game: sometimes the tracks generate with really large angled-corners (you can still pass drive around them normally, but it doesn't look nice). Also, to simplify the physics and maintain the fast pace, touching a wall will re-bound you can in the track direction. This feels good while racing, but makes turning the wrong way on the track hard-to-do.

Game

Code

So I'm in again for LD41 and really looking forward to it. This'll be my 8th LD!

I figured I'd approach this LD a little differently than how I normally would, and instead of thinking about ideas for each of the possible themes beforehand and then waiting for the theme announcement - I'm going to come up three or four different game ideas whose scope fits a weekend's work (the Compo) - and then shoehorn one of those ideas into the theme when its announced.

This isn't ideally what I would want, but I'm hoping it'll save me some precious hours tomorrow morning when I'd normally be struggling to come up with an idea.

I'll be using the Eclipse for Java dev with LWJGL.

Good luck to all

I got up at 04:30 to be greeted with a pretty cool theme, and I've just now settled on something I think will be cool. I'm going to try a mega-lo-mania-esque population distribution and trade-route management. I'm not sure how well it will play, but I'll try and figure that out once I have some mechanics in the game. Oh, and of course the scope is way too ambitious for 2 days. I don't seem to be able to help myself .. :(

For a little while there I forgot we were supposed to be working two incompatible genres together, but I'm happy to say I have an idea to fix in a totally random second one and have the game still make a little sense. So (as usual) you are the leader of a group of survivors in a zombie apocalypse, but instead of gathering resources to improve your situation, you sit on the porch of your shack and sing to attract new members to your group.

Need to be careful though, sing out of key and you'll likely attract the wrong kind of attention.

The genre-mash is now survival-RTS + Speed typing:

As usual, I'm not really sure what to do with the theme. As I prefer the programming aspects of the game, I've decided to just work on a genre which I've wanted to do for a while but never had the time or opportunity(top-down driving) - and I'll shoe-horn the theme into the game tomorrow.

I'm going for a top-down Quarantine-esque (PS-DOS, '94) feel, taxing people around in some ill-fated world.

To the coffee-machine!

I have finally settled on an idea and think I have (for the first time) settled on a finite set of features for the games win and lose coniditions from the beginning: Its a creeper world-esque game called 'The Spread' where you need to save the human race by sacrifice bits of your population to slow it down:

while this will be my 8th or 9th LD, I really cannot wait to get started. Even the talk about the potential themes is hyping me up. This will be a great break to the monotony of the last weeks.

Does anybody have any links to any old blog posts about what makes a good theme in a (LD) game jam? I know I have read some very good ones over the years, but searching google now seems to yield very superficial analysis of good themes. Looking for something with more substance ...

So, as we have pretty much a week left before the start of the Ludum Dare, this is around the time that I start thinking about what things I can do in preparation for the compo. As I've got the next week off work, I'm trying to decide what (and why) I plan to finish before the compo begins ...

Typically this comes down to two things:

1. I'm going to pick a genre and/or game mechanic to focus on

If I'm being honest with myself, 2 days isn't enough time for me to finish a well rounded game and score well in all the categories, so I like to concentrate on those parts which make me happy, which as a programmer, is the coding. I love to use Ludum Dare as a chance to work on a game genre that I wouldn't normally have the chance to work on, and to aid this, I like to pick a genre/mechanics ahead of time that I plan incorporate into the competition. Sure, I still need to shoehorn the ideas into the theme when it's announced, but at least I don't run the risk of not being able to think of an interesting idea on the day. Picking a genre ahead of time also allows me to progress on my second point ..

2. Refine my LD library I have been developing a library/framework which I like to use for each Ludum Dare, and which I try to add new features to be used in any up-and-coming compos. I first started using it in LD31, and I have been slowly building it up over the years. I usually use 'the week before' to refine anything that might not have gone great last time, as well as add any features which are missing. Early on, this was things like creating a screen manager, adding OpenGL support, shaders or a specific feature (render-to-texture, splines etc.). Its also nice to have a single, simple process for creating a distribute-able package for the end of the compo. I spent more than an hour in the first few compos just trying to bundle my game up.

This time around, I will finally be adding some much needed features:

• openAL sound integration
• subpixel sampling shaders (using Handmade Hero Chat 018)
• post effect frame work
• box2d helper classes

What kind of things, if any, do you try and prepare beforehand?