First time doing Ludum Dare, good luck everyone. Look forward to seeing everything coming out of this. I'll be using MonoGame framework and GIMP.

In the past, I would have just booted up Unity to start a new project, but recently I've been dabbling in the MonoGame framework, and decided this would be the perfect opportunity to test my understanding with it so far. Since I'm doing this, I decided I had to keep the scope extremely limited with the game. So I'm going simple.

Graphics Progress

I've only created three sprites/texutres for the game. For the game play itself, there is a circle and a square. The circle is for the player & enemies, while the square is for the background rendering. I also created a simple black outlined white square to use for the textures for the UI.

With the background, and a little code magic, I am able to create a grid style rendering with offset coloring for odd row+column sections.

Framework Progress

I spent most of last night getting a basic framework in place for a few things. I needed a UI system that I could easily define components for. So far I have Menus, Buttons, and Labels put in place. Creating the UI piece was the most time demanding last night though. I think I'm pleased with where it's at now and provides me with a good base to add more as needed easily.

Getting the camera to function the way I wanted was a bit tricky as well for me. Worked on most of it this morning, but it's coming along nicely. I needed a camera that would follow the player, but only when it was outside of a certain boundary.

Jumping back into it now. I should have most of the mechanics put in place by the end of tonight so I can just work on polishing up tomorrow. To end this, here are a couple of screenshots of the current progress in the game, showing the UI and the background render. Also, the yellow outline box shown is the debug view of the bounds used to detect when the camera should move if the player is outside the bounds. The red outline around the circle is the debug drawing of the collision boundary.

This took me much longer than I would have liked it to, but that's what comes when doing jam and learning a new framework at the same time :confused:

What you see here is the circles spawning logic. The camera is zoomed out past the world bounds to show this. The logic chooses a side of the world boundary, either top, bottom,left or right. Based on this, it then chooses a random position along that edge for the circle to spawn and gives it a velocity in the appropriate direction to move it inwards into the world boundary. When it reaches the opposite side of the boundary, it effectively performs a "respawn" choosing a random position, scale, and other properties, than puts it back in the world.

Progress YAY

Progress

UI Framework

One of the things I'm loving and hating about using and learning MonoGame is that I have to build so much on top of the framework and UI is no exception. I love that I'm creating my own framework system for the UI, but I hate how long it takes to do it. After today, I can now create * Menus * Buttons * Labels * Progress Bars * Message Boxes (experimental)

Still working out the kinks in the message box element with word wrapping properly.

Gameplay

Gamplay is at the 80% marker for implement for me. The core functionality is there, so 10% more would be tweaking and balancing things out, and the last 10% are things that are stretch goals to implement.

One of the challenges with the gameplay design that hit this afternoon was the world size. Originally, I had a camera system that would follow the character with a semi-center lock view as they moved around the bounds of the world area. Everything else was designed around that, including enemy spawns and balancing the randomness of the enemy spawns. I found though that having the larger world size and the camera follow made the game feel weird to play. It just didn't work at all, so I had to adjust.

It's now a world size that doesn't require the camera to follow the player to see everything, which meant everything else had to adjust around that, so a good chunk of time was spent there.

Audio

I'm not an audio person and I hate that. I'm terrible when it comes to sound design, so my game is going to be lacking that quality hard. I do have one song that I'm using as the background music that fits the mood I'm trying to set in the game great. The sound effects though, man I'm terrible. I played around in sfxr for a bit and got some things that are alright.

Post-Day Conclusion

All-in-all, i'm pleased with the progress made today. I'm nearing completion, which means my first Ludum Dare submission. I've been keeping track of progress using a kanban board on Asana, which has helped a ton in getting thoughts organized. I've been streaming while doing this, and the people coming in to talk have been great and help to keep me motivated. For now though, it's sleep, that I need.

Hope everyone else is making good progress. See you at the end

Progress

The game for all intents and purpose is finished.

Did you read that? It's finished.

Just need to do some minor balancing tweaking, test, build and submit. See you all on the other side

Wow, I'm done. Droplet has been finished and submitted. Super proud to have finished for Ludum. This was my first Ludum and my first game jam, so I didn't know what to expect going in, but it was a wild ride.

Here is a little trailer I made for the game https://youtu.be/UmCM3mFo3XA

Thanks everyone who came out on stream while I was doing this and kept me motivated. Specifically want to give a shout out to Felicks, Hashi, and 7aylor.

Here's my submission, hope everyone who plays it enjoys it https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/$60074

Want a game you can just sit back and relax while playing? If you haven't tried droplet yet, give it a go. Let me know what you think.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmCM3mFo3XA

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/droplet

So, not saying to much on my combined genre's just yet, but made some solid progress tonight. Had some issue with the camera not doing the scroll properly, but finally got it working correctly.

I usually don't spend to much time on the artwork aspect of the game. I mean, look at my submission last year, it's just colored circles. I spent a good hour-ish tonight though on make some, and man the look of this is so much better. I've gone from "Adventure on Atari" to "This could be a gameboy game". Comparisons below on the no art work vs doing some art work

No work on art, just colored squares

Actual work on the art

This was way more fun to make than I thought it would be. I really enjoyed this theme. I choose to combine the battle royale with turn based fighting. Here is a short trailer for the game

Game Trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyeg6q8pIZ4

Description

You are trapped in a dungeon with other slimes. The rules are simple, only one slime can leave. Time is precious, as there is poison slowly creeping in from all sides of the dungeon. ​You must hurry to defeat them all and become the sole survivor, or die a painful death.

You can check out the submission page at https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/slime-battle-royale

Been getting some really good feedback on Slime Battle Royale. I've decided I want to take this one and continue developing after Ludum Dare.

If you haven't had a chance to check it out yet, go play it and let me know what you think. Any feedback is good feedback that I can use as I continue working on this.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/slime-battle-royale

Here is a quick trailer I made for the game https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyeg6q8pIZ4

There are some things going on behind the scenes in Slime Battle Royale, and I wanted to take a moment to share it with everyone.

AI Movement

First, let me say that originally I had pathfinding for the enemies, but ended up having to rip it out because of some issue with it. Instead, so I could get the game submitted in time, I made a simpler system for the AI. They have two states: Random and Towards. By default, all AI uses the Random state.

Random State
In this state, the AI chooses one random direction to move, then the next frame they choose to move towards the player on the X or Y axis. I was hoping this would work out, but in the end, they seemingly just randomly move.

Toward State If the player sits still and doesn't move for 3 seconds, all AI switch to this state. In this state, they evaluate a towards vector and move towards the player. If the player moves, then they all switch back to the Random state.

AI Attack Choices

In battle, it's rock paper scissors. In real life, there's not much strategy to it, and it all comes down to random. In Slime Battle Royal, it's all random as well, with some added weighting. There are six arrays that are filled with Rock, Paper, or Scissors attack enums. Some arrays contain more of one type than the others. Each enemy is randomly assigned one of these arrays, and chooses a random attack from their array when attacking.

AI vs AI

Battle commences between the player and an enemy when they are next to each other on adjacent squares. However, did you know the AI's will also battle it out among themselves? It's a battle royale after all, and they want to win to. Each time two enemies are adjacent to each other, a random roll is thrown to see if they'll fight.

If you haven't had a chance to check the game out yet, head on over and give me some solid feedback and rating. I want to develop this out post Ludum Dare into a full game, with a much better system for fighting.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/slime-battle-royale

How about slimes? If your answer is no to either of those questions, then that's ok, I'll forgive you.

And while I'm forgiving you, you could check out Slime Battle Royale. I did mention slimes right?

Currently sitting at 29 ratings, would love to break the 100 barrier this event.

How about a trailer for the game. It's got action, romance, a bit of suspense, and plenty of comedy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyeg6q8pIZ4

Be sure to link your game below as well so I can check it out when I get home from work today.

There you are, in the final moments of PUBG, you and a few other players left. You're being as careful as possible to not get discovered as you move in on another player. You get into position, you aim, and bam! You're dead. You didn't notice the guy to your left.

Does this sound familiar? Are you tired of losing at battle royale games?

Well try Slime Battle Royale. It's single player, it's turn based, it's battle royale. Fight every enemy, mash the buttons and choose the same attack over and over. Stand in the center to cheese the round so you can win. Camp the poison circle and wait for everyone else to kill themselves. So many options, what you do is up to you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyeg6q8pIZ4

Be sure to stop by and check out Echo. How long can you survive before the ceiling eventually seals off and falls to squish you.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/echo

I am live, playing your games on stream. Come hang out, use the commands to submit your game and we'll do a live play and give feedback.

https://www.twitch.tv/manbeardgames

I am live, playing your games on stream. Come hang out, use the commands to submit your game and we’ll do a live play and give feedback.

https://www.twitch.tv/manbeardgames