This will be my first LD Jam.

I’m looking forward to both the experience and the test of my skills

Tools:

Engine – Unity

Sound – Bfxr

Art – Photoshop, (possibly) Flash

Let’s make some games!

This is is the first game I’ve made for Ludum Dare, and I had a great time with it. I feel like I’ve learned a lot, and I definitely want to do it again.

Initially I had wanted to participate in the Jam, but I went for the Compo instead because I thought the Jam was ending today, and I fit the Compo rules.

Edit: How could I forget to include the link?

http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-32/?action=preview&uid=50007

I’ve been wondering what to do with my time for a little while now, and just saw that the MiniLD started today. Perfect. I’m a bit rusty, but I’m in!

I’m pleased to announce that I didn’t run out of time. This was the first boss fight I’ve ever programmed and I’m very pleased with the results. I recruited a buddy to do music for the game and it turned out really well. Be sure to give Mothership a try!

http://ludumdare.com/compo/minild-62/?action=preview&uid=50007

This will be my second Ludum Dare, aside from a couple of miniLDs. I’m very excited (as always) for the jam, but even more so this time around because I’ll be doing it with a team.

I’ll be using Unity and either Flash or Paint.net. Can’t say much about sounds because I’m working with a sound guy this time, but if I end up doing anything with sound it’ll be in BFXR.

Good luck to everyone participating!

I’ve just gone ahead and fixed up some bugs with the menus, sounds, and AI in ‘So You Think You Can Science?’. I also ported it over to mac and linux so all you fine folks on systems other than windows can enjoy it. We all had a blast putting this game together and we really hope you enjoy it as much as we’ve been enjoying playing all of your games. If you haven’t played it yet, check out SYTYCS? here. Just remember, the original game submitted at the jam deadline is the windows version here on the Ludum Dare site. Anything you find on itch.io is slightly updated.

Thanks for playing!

Our Ludum Dare 35 experience was riddled with problems from scheduling to programming and even to brainstorming. We had a HELL of a time brainstorming… In the end, we came up with ‘So You Think You Can Science?’ (SYTYCS?), a top down shooter/roguelike featuring no less than 3 playable characters.

The Team

The main team behind SYTYCS? was myself (programming/design, @morrilet), Jeremy Helsel (programming/design, @JIHlucky7), Josh Ruffolo (music/sound, @jruff7) and Jasen Helsel (graphics). We also had some help from our good friend Matt Carollo (@trip_yuh), who stepped in with some sound effects toward the last half.

The Idea

Brainstorming, for us, started at around 8 or 9 PM (depending on your time zone) and it took us a solid couple of hours to settle on SYTYCS?. Josh wanted to do sounds for a sci-fi game, I wanted to make either a dark and gritty story or a racing game where cars transformed into humans (I still think it’s a genius idea), and Jeremy wanted to make a roguelike. We ended up switching our idea back and forth between a gritty story game or a goofy shooter. In the end, we went with the shooter, because that’s simply what we knew best. The first idea we had for the characters was a porcupine who shot his quills, but with the addition of Lemmy (the bee-shooting bear), we swapped the porcupine for a cactus. We just didn’t want two animals, and for us, Lemmy was the more interesting character. The porcupine was replaced with Francus (pronounced Fran-sus), the cowboy cactus. After that we were trying to come up with an idea for a character that wasn’t carbon based, and our tired brains settled on a hairdryer wielding, you guessed it, a smaller hairdryer. Thus, Cordulator the maniacal hairdryer was born. We also all agreed that it should be sci-fi themed, so we decided that the setting would be an infinitely deep space ship run by an alien mad scientist and guarded by his alien henchmen.

The Process

We ran into issues at almost every step of the way. Firstly, this was my second time using github and my first time using it with more than one other person, so we had a few scares during development. Secondly, I’d never worked on a project with this many people, and planning was soon recognized as a big issue. All of us have jobs, and some of those jobs are at odd hours of the day. This made keeping everyone working together difficult. In fact, on the last day, we almost didn’t have any overlap where all of us could work together to submit it. Some people even left work early and rushed home to finish. The whole thing would’ve taken even longer, too, if it weren’t for some scripts I had lying around. Because of this, we didn’t have to bother making a camera or 2D navmesh agents. This was also the first time I’d actually used a procedurally generated map in a game, and the first time I’d programmed shooter AI that did more than appear, point, and shoot.

Submission Hour

We went right up to submission hour and came in hot. We were in a mad dash to get sound effects in and build. To make matters worse, every time we built, we had a new issue. Once, no sound effects played. Another time the player spawned in with no health. Every build, new problems. In fact, the build we ended up submitting had horrible UI scaling problems and didn’t play gunshot sounds. These bugs and others wore heavily on all of our minds for the rest of the night and most of the next day. We hadn’t intended to release any updates, but we couldn’t live knowing we could’ve done better. We released an update to fix the menu resolution and sound effect problems. A day later, released an update to fix wall sticking.

Final Thoughts

I think we all learned a lot this time around. We certainly have a better handle on working in a large group and I feel pretty confident in my ability to throw together AI, which was entirely alien to me for a long while. Next time I think we’ll probably scale back a bit so we’re all less stressed out. Also, we’ll have to manage our schedules a little bit better. I think, all in all, that this was a fantastic jam for all of us. We all got to do what we wanted with the game and I feel very proud of the game (and the characters) that came out of this jam.

You can find the original build of ‘So You Think You Can Science?’ here.

If you’d rather check out the updated version, you can find it here.

Go ahead and give our game a try! We’d love to hear what you think.

I’m extra pumped to get to work on this Ludum Dare. Normally I can’t make it into the December jam, so this is going to be extra fun. It’ll be a nice break from my current projects.

As usual, I’ll be using Unity, Photoshop/PDN, Blender (if I work in 3D), and BFXR/Audacity. I’ll be working with a buddy this time around.

If you feel like getting progress updates, check us out on Twitter! @morrilet (me) @JIHlucky7 (Jeremy).

Well, despite all the stress (extra, this time around), we’ve managed to make the deadline once again.

Meth Horse is the story of one meth addicted seahorse, just looking for his next score. Unfortunately for him, he’s super pregnant. He has hundreds of meth babies ready to pop out of his beautiful manly oven, and if he recognizes even a single one as legitimate he’ll need to pay their tuition.

Can you keep Meth Horse away from his kids? Try it out here!

I don’t think I can post this to the new site yet, so I guess I’ll put it up here.

I’m excited to get going on another Ludum Dare. This time around I’ll be working with two other people, both doing audio part-time. I’ll be tackling code and art.

I’m not quite sure what my audio-bros will be using (probably Audacity), but I’ll be using Unity (C#), Photoshop, and Spriter. If we decide to go the 3D route for whatever reason, I’ll be using Blender as well.

Good luck to everyone participating. I can’t wait to see what kick-ass games you all make.

rovR is a space themed puzzle game about exploring our solar system. If you're looking for brain-busting puzzles and a little humour, look no further!

Note: If you're on Mac or Linux, those builds are now up, so join in on the fun!

You can downlad rovR from itch.io or GameJolt, or read more on rovR's Ludum Dare page. - itch.io - GameJolt - Ludum Dare Page

If you want to see more stuff about rovR (or other game development junk), follow me!

I've been loving all of your games so far, and I look forward to playing as many as I can in the coming weeks. In the meantime, check out my entry, rovR! It's a casual, space-themed puzzler that I think you'll dig ;)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B93oM7hN7w0

If you actually stuck around and watched the trailer: kudos! Anyway, I'm going to get back to playing your wonderful creations. If you want to link me your game, please do. I'd love to play it.

We're playing games like mad for the next few hours, so feel free to link your entries. We'll play as many as we can. Also, if you haven't yet tried our entry, rovR, we'd love some input from you all.

We'll see you all in the comments! :)

morrilet & catmaggiori

Alright, I'll be playing games like crazy for the next few hours. Comment with your game page and I'll leave you some feedback! And, of course, if you feel like checking out my entry, rovR, I'd greatly appreciate it.

Lets do this!

Never thought we'd make it to part 3, but we can't get enough of your games! Leave us a link to your page and we'll leave you some feedback. If you feel like being bro-ly, we've also got a game (rovR) that we'd love to stick in your hands.

Let's play some games!

-@caterein & @morrilet

Hah. But really, I made a word cloud out of the comments for my entry, rovR. Recognize the shape? ;)

Have you played it? Yes? No? Go play it. It's free, and we play all the games from our comments!

With the end of voting looming over us, I'd like to have one more shot at your games. So, without further ado, here's Feedback R Us Part 6. Link us your games! Last chance!

We have a bunch of feedback already, but if you want to try rovR we'd still really appreciate the feedback.

- @morrilet & @caterein

It's not often that I get to participate in Ludum Dare (thanks, prior commitments), but this time around it fit my schedule well enough that I could squeeze it in. The tools I'll be using are BFXR, Audacity, Unity, Photoshop, and Spriter. I may even use Yarn (go check this out if you haven't heard of it) for dialogue in Unity this time around. I'll also try to get a timelapse recorded. I failed pretty spectacularly at it last time, but I think (hope) I've learned from my mistakes.

Alright, that's enough chitchat for now. Good luck and happy jamming!

Puttsy is a mini-golf tower defense game where you have to strategically place towers to get a hole-in-one! Don't go over par and be sure to bring your thinking cap for this charming mashup.

If you leave me a review, don't forget to post a link to your game! I'll be playing all of your awesome mashups after I get some sleep.

Hey everyone, @caterein and I will be playing, rating, and leaving feedback on your games for the next few hours, so leave a comment below if you've got something you want us to play! We promise to get around to everything you guys link us.

And of course, if you're interested in checking out our game, Puttsy, we'd love some more feedback!

EDIT: 5 hours and something like 26 games later, we've done it! Thanks so much for throwing all of your beautiful creations at us! Now I'm going to bed before I have an aneurysm.