We've skipped Ludum Dare since LD #36, but we've decided to come back again to make a good game~!

• This was our previous account on the old website: http://ludumdare.com/compo/author/nichii/

As you can see with our avatar, we have a new logo for our team for an upcoming game that we are planning to make.

Anyway here are our tools...

Nicholas Chan:

1) Game engine: GameMaker Studio 2 Desktop

2) DAW: FL Studio 12

3) SFX: BFXR

4) Audio editor: Audacity

Isaac Soong:

1) Game engine: GameMaker Studio 2 Desktop

2) Graphic editor: Photoshop CC and GIMP

3) 3D graphic: Blender

We have already setup our source control and we are ready for LD, cya there!

Looks very promising, still have to make it so that player can actually shoot by tomorrow!

Should be able to complete by tomorrow midnight..

It's been 5 years now. Looking back at our old games on the old LD site, it feels kinda great to compare the two. To see how far you've gone haha.

Old Game : http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-25/?action=preview&uid=18619

Current LDJAM game : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/technocide

TECHNOCIDE is a turn based FPS game where you have to charge and shoot. Plan your moves against your enemies, they only move when you do.

Come and play our game at: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/technocide

Game Description

Traverse inside the artificial planet fighting through strange violent technology. Defeat the class-3-entity within the labyrinth.

TECHNOCIDE is a turn based FPS game where you have to charge and shoot. Plan your moves against your enemies, they only move when you do. Unleash powerful attacks by charging more than once. There are 6 different fire modes to choose from, each requiring different amounts of charges.

• Game link: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/technocide

What have we learnt?

It's been a while since we've joined the previous Ludum Dare, which is Ludum Dare 36 back in August 2016. We're going with the same classic team again consisting only of Isaac and me. The following will break down into what both of us has learn over the course of this Ludum Dare.

Chan Pei Keong - (Programmer and music composer)

• Don't Rewrite Code If It Works - I used to rewrite codes a lot in order to reorganize it and squeeze out as many tiny optimizations as possible. This has hindered a lot of our progress before. Now I've decided to only do optimization on things that affect performance the most, which meant that we had to use a lot of copy pasted codes that are from our old projects. Most of our time, we focused on game feel and programmed features.
• Don't Judge The Music Without SFX - I have to admit, I'm not a very talented music composer. I was planning on not adding music at all after creating a second version of this song which still doesn't sound as good. However, after adding the sound effects, the music doesn't sound so bad afterwards, and people are praising it!
• Balancing By Testing - For game balancing, all we did was to play the game and test out the values until it feels right. It usually takes about 2-3 times balancing a single feature before it feels good. I've also learnt that people associate behavioral difference between two enemies even thought they were all using the same enemy class (interesting eh?).
• Avoiding Distraction - As for avoiding distractions, I've spammed DOOM 2016's OST over and over until my ears bleed. Plus it feels thematic to our game. I have also avoided Facebook or any sort of voice chat platforms and only rely on text chat on Discord.

Isaac Soong Bo Jun - (Artist and sound effects)

• Art wise. I think I've finally found what I'm good at, doing med sized pixel art. It looks like lower rez pixel art doesn't necessarily mean it's just easier and faster. So without a doubt, getting out of your comfort zone is never a bad idea. You'd probably find something useful or better than what you're used to. Feel free to break any art rules you see fit and don't be afraid of making it look bad for the sake of a placeholder. I did not limit my color palette for my art here. It took me a while to allow that to go into the final product. For good or bad, it seems to be well received. At least Nik isn't bellowing down on me for making bad art this time haha.

• Try to maintain an organized work ethic. I used to be diagnosed with ADD. Whether or not if it's a false positive, I still had issues getting focused on what I do. That basically makes it hard to work on anything. This was especially hard since I am working at a long distance with Nik with no one monitoring over my shoulder in case I just pause and daydream. So to solve that I find that having more distractions is probably the best way to get you undistracted. Spam music, spam audiobooks, spam just about anything really. Otherwise really you just need just remind yourself that you have work to do or you'll never do anything you really want. Imagine dying in the far future realizing you've never done what you've ever wanted.

• Never too late to thumbnail or make concept art So I am sure you can probably notice with our game, the art is a little inconsistent when it comes to the enemy designs and whatnot. They're supposed to be an alien of the same race, story wise. Now we have some blue guy with spikes on his back, a facehugger thing (Which used to look like a sperm, those 4 arms were added because we noticed that) and the boss was just a reddish naked guy that stares at you. Get some paper, and just thumbnail your stuff before proceeding with your characters. It was what made making the facehugger thing easier for me to do.

What Went Well?

1. Graphics - We've finally found an art style that Isaac is comfortable with and could pump out at a consistent rate. We're impressed at how much art we've produced in such a short time.
2. Gameplay - Not only that, we're also impressed by the amount of complicated game mechanics which we could fit into the game in under 3 days. Unfortunately, we had to cut about 2 features from the original plan (enemy recharging and player guarding).
3. Audio - We were expecting the audio to be the worst thing about this game but with the last minute music and sound effects added, they turned out to be decent. The reviewers praised it! Luckily we didn't cut the music out.
4. Game Scope - This game has probably the largest scope that we've ever made. However, after many years of making Ludum Dare games, we've matured and are now able to estimate how fast we can implement certain features. Thus, this is why we only have 2 cut features.
5. Game Feel - We've focused a lot more on the game feel by adding visual and auditory feedback and it paid off. The game feels like an actual game and we're proud of that.
6. Minimal bugs - Throughout the development, we've only experienced 2 major issues with the game, but they are all fixed very shortly (I'll say in less than 30 minutes). I'll associate that with our experience in games development and coding.
7. Rudimentary AI - We didn't have time to implement a full AI so we opted for basic AI that acts using basic rules with some randomization. However, they would sometimes get stuck behind a wall. This ended up being a good point since people believed the AI used a strategy on them by hiding behind the entrance to wait for player to come through to get attacked (in reality, they didn't have line of sight to the player, so they are actually stuck there). The second enemy behaves differently by rushing towards the player (even though they are all the same enemy class, including the boss). However, this creates an interesting strategy for players as they have to use the AOE Shockwave attack to hurt enemies that are hugging the walls at the entrance.
8. Successful Innovation - This time around, we've decided to make something totally different and has never been seen before (at least as far as we know), and we've successfully did it!

What Went Wrong?

1. Level Design - Due to our game scope, we had to design the levels at the last minute, and only tweak it when it doesn't feel right. People were getting lost easily as well. The level that actually got redesigned the most was the boss level.
2. Rudimentary AI - Unfortunately, since the boss is the same enemy class as the regular enemies, it made it harder to change his behavior so he ended up hugging the walls far too often instead of rushing towards the player. We had to make a lot of changes to the boss and the boss level in order to compensate for that.
3. Rushed Code - Because we have so much to code, we ended up hard-coding a lot of things, which meant that many things such as the boss are hard to change. This meant that there are a lot of unoptimized codes as well. At least the game still runs fine.
4. Zero Allocated Playtest - We didn't get to have the 3rd day to get people to test our game in order to balance the it so we ended up testing the game ourselves and balanced it based on our feel. We ended up missing a lot of things as expected.
5. Shoddy Balancing - Due to the lack of play testing allocated, the single shot was useless and healing was a little too overpowered.
6. Unpolished Art - The art was not planned well. There were some stray pixels as well floating in mid air ingame.
7. Menu And Tutorials - We made the end screen, menu and tutorials at the last minute, therefore all of it were just texts and graphics. The tutorial screens were too heavy and we could have made it look more simpler.

Play Our Game!

In short, this is probably the largest Ludum Dare game we've ever created so far. It was super stressful and we had very little sleep while developing it. We hope that you guys will come and enjoy our latest game for Ludum Dare!

• Game link: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/technocide

YOU WILL DIE A LOT

Genres mixed: Bullet hell + puzzle.

Game link: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/gallica

Game Description

Genres mixed: Bullet Hell + Puzzle

Get to the end of the level and try NOT to die a lot

What Went Well?

1. First time using Unity for Ludum Dare - This is our very first Ludum Dare game made with Unity. Previously, all of our Ludum Dare games are made with Game Maker Studio. I would say this is rather successful as I am still a rookie with Unity.
2. Music and Sound FX - I composed the music about 5 years ago, and it went super well. The sound effects are pretty decent too!
3. Engaging gameplay - I was playing the game this morning, and my mom just woke up and got engaged with my gameplay... 10/10.
4. Smooth control - Apart from getting stuck, the control is pretty smooth and feels like an arcade game. The control layout is pretty straight-forward and simplistic as well. All you need is a joystick (for movement) and two buttons (which are not essential to the gameplay), and you can play this game.

What Didn't Went Well?

1. Bugs at last minute - We only have 3-4 hours before submission before we started getting loads of bugs. This is mostly due to our level design having weird floating point values for the transform and scripts aren't attached to the correct place. We should've been careful with the transform values and make sure they are rounded down.
2. Graphics - Graphics were not original, we have limited number of art assets and it just looks like a typical indie game (unoriginal).
3. Actual puzzle elements - We focused way too much on the bullet hell element that we have ignored the puzzle elements until the very last day. This meant that our actual puzzle parts are too basic and simple. The pushable block are too sensitive to touch and hard to push it to the exact place that we wanted. We should've went with a dynamic block with constrained rotation
4. Getting stuck - It's easy to get stuck behind wall while trying to escape. We tried to fix this by making opening bigger.

Play Our Game!

• Game link: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/gallica

Although we have to lower the quality settings down due to performance issues, so we'll still recommend those on Windows to download Windows version instead!

Game link: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/gallica

Introduction

Even though the both of us have joined at least 9 successful Ludum Dare jams and with the previous 3 games completed every planned feature. This time we massively overscoped the game by a large margin.

Original concept vs final game

1. Instead of a timer counting down, the objective used to involve solving various puzzles around the house in order to escape.
2. The original house plan was massive and had a loop around hallway.
3. After killing the zombie, they turn into a higher level zombie after staying dead on the ground for a while. Therefore, it was inadvisable to kill them. The only way to ensure they stay dead is by shotgun or kill them again when they are a level 3 zombie.
4. There will be zombies trying to break through the window, after which they will start spawning mobs slowly from that opened window, making the game harder as it progresses.
5. The inventory was supposed to be the central focus of the theme. The unimplemented items are: med-pack, wooden planks (to block off the window), and other puzzle items.
6. Pistol and shotgun ammo was supposed to be so rare, you would rather use the knife, but we totally scrapped it while trying to balance the game at the last minute.
7. Immersive sound effects instead of the 8-bit generated sfx we ended up with.

The Bad

Mistakes were made along the way, but we learnt so much from being so massively overscoped in this Ludum Dare.

• Lightweight Rendering Pipeline (LWRP) - We decided to try out the package in Unity for this LD. It's still in preview, therefore we encountered a lot of technical issues like the depth camera, limited lighting options, and frustum culling.
• WebGL Exclusive! - As if that wasn't enough, we decided to make an FPS game for WebGL, and WebGL is really hostile towards anything that has locked mouse and mouse movement unless we spend more time testing and fixing it. We were on the verge of dropping WebGL for Windows platform instead.
• Art experimentation went badly - Took too much time experimenting with art at the wrong time, only to end up losing the original zombie model and ended up having bad game visuals due to insufficient time.
• Implementing FPS with inventory for first time on Unity during LD - I mean come on, what could go wrong guys? :ok_hand::joy:
• Miscommunication - It's not our first time having miscommunication during LD (it happens on each of our LD anyway), but the amount of time lost due to it costed heavily this time around.
• Weak connection to theme - Originally, we intend on connecting to the theme with limited inventory slots with the needs to juggle between various items + tough zombies that chases after you. Now we only have zombies part.

The Good

Even though we didn't managed to finish all of our planned features, we did learnt a lot during this LD.

• Everything is made from scratch! - All of the programming and art are made from scratch, and that is something we're proud of.
• Technical issues around LWRP and WebGL - We know what to expect the next time we develop for these.
• Programming and art skills - Based on our previous track record, we knew we could improve and develop much faster if we trained more.
• Inventory system - Proudly developed from ground up without following any tutorials!
• Lighting - We did learn how to avoid leaks and fix shadow bias after this LD (We didn't have time to actually fix it though).

Conclusion

We are still hopeful that we can get our development speed up to par to what we did to our Technocide game made on GameMaker:Studio 2. In our early days of using GameMaker, we also did massively overscope and failed to deliver a quality game experience. Fast forward few years later, we're making a game with a slightly bigger scope but better, stable and a much more complete experience. For now, we'll just make games with a smaller scope while trying to learn more about Unity. Probably make a 2D game for upcoming LD jams?

Link to our latest game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/close-call-a-claustrophobic-survival-shooter

Play now! 🎮

Play Now! 🎮

Intro

During this LD, we faced many obstacles that would've easily ended our run. We face an existential crisis when we realized our actual game had nothing to do with the theme. It was also the first time we worked with two other first-timers to game jam when the original member wasn't free. Alas, we were able to make it on time with ease. Below describes our thoughts after finishing LD.

Obstacles

We had plenty of obstacles during this time around. Isaac, our main artist, won't be available for most of the jam. Ken, our programmer, had to become our stand-in artist. All of us had to work on Monday as well. We were a little bit pessimistic when I, the main gameplay programmer had a power outage. I had to consider finishing the game outside of LD instead but guess what, we persisted through it and made a game anyway.

(I was really happy and excited when this finally worked)

Original Concept VS Actual Game

People might be wondering "wait, what does this game have to do with the theme"? You were right. Originally, the game was meant to have way more portals and way more "past versions of yourself". Passing through each portal meant that you are going "deeper and deeper into the time layer". Alas, it was all lost in translation during the level designing stage. We ended up having a static camera, which meant a smaller level, which led to fewer amount of portals possible.

This is what we were imagining it to be on a smaller scale:

Team's Thoughts

This was the first time I worked together with two other colleagues from the same company (we're all from the same company, including Isaac). I sent a survey asking each team members to see what they think about this time's game jam. - The game jam went well enough. - They felt their contribution was appreciated averagely (or maybe no thoughts on it?).

But most importantly, we scored the highest in terms of how well we were working together compared to the company we are working in. I made a meme about that.

The Good

• Definitely the "Tenet" time travel mechanics. Went better than initially thought. It was a risky idea that paid off.
• We had enough sleep and never had to work overtime this time around. Mainly because we kept the scope really small this time around.
• Music, screwed around in Bosca Ceoil for the first time and pushed out a passable gameplay theme in just a few minutes.

The Bad

• WebGL Physics sucks. It worked way better in the Windows version. Oh well.
• The game was too easy and too short. If we had enough time, we would've made more and better levels.
• Level designers thought the camera must always be static, and thus the level had to be designed around it. It was a miscommunication within the team but it was too late to change it.
• If our main artist was around, we could've made it look even better, such as turning it into a 3D platformer. Alas, at least Ken was competent enough to be a stand-in artist.

Conclusion

Working on this game proves that we can work together pretty well if the company didn't hold us back. This also massively gave Seng Yong and Ken much-needed experience, as this was their first game jam. We are hoping to turn this into a full game with Isaac once he's back on the art helm.

Play Now! 🎮

We were really happy at how our LD version had turned out, so we have decided to work on it as a full game.

LD Version

Post-LD Development

Play LD Version Here! 🎮