So I'm in...

I'm a solo game dev, with my skill distribution being about 60% programming, 25% audio, 15% art. As the title says, I'm completely new to LD, with absolutely no plan for LD44, so I'm going to have to try my best and see what happens.

I may or may not use any premade assets, as I do really want to make a game from scratch, but at the same time my art skills aren't going to get me much further than good programmer art...

As for the tools that I'll be using, I honestly don't even know what I'm going to use, and really the only one that I'm certain about is Unity, so I'm not going to bother listing any of them...

Anyways, I'm looking forward to LD44, I just hope I haven't bit off more than I can chew...

Just sharing ideas for each of the themes, using a top down shooter as the starting point.

1. Limited memory Play as a computer, load power-ups into memory, unload previous power-ups to use better ones.

2. Ridiculously overpowered Ammo replenishes faster the longer you play, with the weight slowing your movement, power-ups could be empty magazines for you to fill up.

3. Your life is currency Health doesn't regenerate, but HP can be collected from enemies, which could be swapped for other power-ups.

4. Side effects Shooting enemies make them move faster, missed shots spawn extra enemies, power-ups hurt you when collected.

5. Space exploration Power-ups are invisible, and can only be found by exploring the room.

6. Change the genre of a classic video game Agar.io as a top down shooter?

7. Only one enemy Enemies are actually parts of the final boss, the more of them you destroy, the smaller the boss will be when you reach it.

8. Risky powerups Power-ups are like a coin flip, and can sometimes hurt you instead of giving you a power-up.

9. Shelter You're in a house, and you need to keep shooting HP at the walls to stop them being destroyed by enemies.

10. Color changes everything Your weapon is a paintbrush, and you paint enemies different colors, such as red to slow them down, green to poison them, or blue to freeze them.

11. Everything has a price Pay to get more HP, pay to kill enemies, pay to pause the game, you get the idea...

12. Contagious Shoot enemies with viruses, which slowly kill them, while also making them more dangerous in the meantime

13. Tiny town Top down shooter in a tiny town?

14. Mutation Your bullets randomly change enemies into either power-ups, or bigger enemies.

15. No upgrades, only downgrades Start the game with all the power-ups, after each wave, you need to pick which one to give up.

16. Underground The enemies are underground, and you're on the surface?

I have something that's reasonably good.

So the idea is this; you're made of money (literally), and it's the only resource you can use for anything you do - in other words, it's your life, your currency, and your ammo!

And here is my progress so far:

(and no, that's definitely not the final design of the enemies, they're most likely going to look more like this > :pig2:)

Also, now that I've settled on my idea, I'm finally certain about what style I'm going for, and thus the tools I'll be using:

• Engine: Unity
• Art: Piskel, GIMP
• Sounds: SFXR, Audacity
• Music: Bosca Ceoil

Now, time to get some sleep...

Sometimes bugs can be funny...

Got the upgrade menu mostly done:

Also added some sounds for the shooting, made the art for the enemies (as seen earlier), and got some more of the background coding done.

Still to be done: - Finish creating the menus - Add more sounds, and hopefully music too - Implement wave system - Create a better background? - Many other small things that I can't be bothered listing :p

Yeah, I've still got a lot to do, but I have got a definite design now, so at least I won't need to spend any more time working that out...

Anyway, see ya all tomorrow!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/everything-is-money

Too tired to write anything else... it's 4am now... :sleeping:

Just a few small fixes...

Changes: - Slightly altered coin pickup sound to make it less painful - Slightly lowered volume of all sounds

Bug Fixes: - Fixed spelling mistake on upgrade screen - Fixed bug where upgrade screen would remain visible if the player died while increasing stats

Haven't played my game yet? Check it out here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/everything-is-money

Just released the (heavily commented) source code for Everything is Money! on GitHub: https://github.com/OgelGames/Everything-is-Money

Haven't played my game yet? Check it out here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/everything-is-money

I'm back for my second LD, which will also only be my third game jam I've entered (I failed to enter both the GMTK and CGJ jams due to forgetting about them).

Some of you may remember my LD44 game Everything is Money!, which did surprisingly well, and was supposed to be updated post-jam... Unfortunately I have still not gotten around to it, despite having all my plans laid out for it, and even made some progress.

This was due, as was the case before LD44, to falling into the loop of getting an interesting idea, starting a new game, and never turning it into a finished product. First I experimented with multiplayer using Mirror, then came a whole bunch of other ideas and other stuff, and I even almost made a clone of Minecraft, until that ended up leading me to discover Minetest.

Minetest is what some might call a Minecraft clone, but it's much more than that - with full Lua based modding, it's been quite the draw for my time, as I'm still trying to up my knowledge of Lua, and it's been quite fun to do it while modding a game. It's also upped my knowledge of GitHub, due to the fact that I have been contributing to some existing mods.

But anyways, enough of all that, it's time for LD45, and time for me to make a game!

Like last time, I'll be using Unity, along with some combination of the following tools:

• Piskel or GraphicsGale, and GIMP for graphics
• Audacity and SFXR or Bfxr for sound effects
• LMMS, Bosca Ceoil, or Pytchie for music (maybe)
• Trello for planning/time management

Overall I'm much more confident than I was for LD44, I just need to make sure I put more effort to managing my time, so i don't end up finishing at 4am...

Now all i need is a good theme... :smile:

1. Start with nothing You start as a spirit, and have to gather body parts to be able to complete different tasks.

2. Unconventional travel Play as a frog, you're too lazy to jump, so you use your tongue to pull yourself around.

3. Side effects Shooting enemies make them move faster, missed shots spawn extra enemies, power-ups hurt you when collected.

4. Small character, big enemies You're a tiny ant, but you're also part of a huge colony, and together you can overpower even the biggest enemies.

5. Factory You work in a automated factory, and need to program the robots to complete their tasks.

6. Shelter The zombie apocalypse has come, but your home is falling apart, you must keep repairing it to survive.

7. One item, many uses You have a magic goo that can be shaped into anything you can think of, use it to overcome obstacles, as a key to a puzzle, or as a weapon.

8. Night is coming You decided to go for a walk, but it's getting late, and you're afraid of the dark, you must get back home.

9. Making connections You're an electronics repairer, you must fix the the wiring correctly, but you're also under pressure to fix as much stuff as possible, as fast as possible, because you get paid for each item you fix.

10. Isolation Your car has broken down in the middle of nowhere, help is coming, but you must survive the night first.

11. Duplication You control two identical characters at the same time, but in different places, you need to make sure both can get to the goal without the other getting hurt.

12. Mutation A science experiment has gone wrong, now your body is slowly mutating, and you must create an antidote before it's too late.

13. Low Tech All the power in the city is off, and you're stuck at the top of a futuristic skyscraper, you must resort to using whatever you can to escape.

14. Take one, leave the rest Collect tons of power-ups, but only take one to fight the final boss.

15. Evolve to survive Find food, grow bigger, gain new abilities, fight other creatures, and become the dominant life form.

Something I noticed as I was writing this, was that themes 3, 6, and 12 were also in the final round for last LD... (in fact I just copy-pasted my previous idea for theme 3 :smile:)

Overall quite a nice selection of themes, the only ones I personally don't like are 5 and 15, just because there isn't much room for creative interpretation with those.

Only got about 3.5 hours to actually work on the game today, but this is the result:

Basic idea is a robot building game, where you start with (almost) nothing, and then collect blocks from other robots you destroy. I'm not really focusing much on the them much this time, I'm just making something fun, and hoping the scope of the game isn't too big... :worried:

~~BTW, if anyone can suggest a good way to capture gifs, it would be great, as the current way I'm doing it (with OBS and Instagiffer) is way too slow... (the above gif took over 10 minutes to make)~~

I didn't get much time to work on the game again today, but I managed to make some good progress, including designing the building UI:

I should have more time tomorrow, so hopefully I'll be able to finish the game without sacrificing too much...

Had to sacrifice a lot, but I still managed to get something good: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/robogon

Now that my game is "done", it's time for the fun part of LD - playing games!

Post your games below, doesn't really matter what they are, but if you've got any building/crafting games, I'd love to play those in particular :slight_smile:

Also, if you have the time, it would be great if you could check out my game, Robogon

It might have taken way longer than it should have, but I've finally put together the first post-jam update for my game Robogon!

This update includes: * A more polished robot editor with the ability to rotate blocks (using Q and E) * A full start menu with options * Smooth scene transitions * Some opponents to battle (!) * And more...

To get the updated version, simply go to the game page, and download the version marked "v0.2.0" (Windows only, sorry).

So... a bit has happened for me since the last LD; I've learnt LUA, made a game for Wowie Jam 2.0, and dumped Unity for Godot... Wait, I've switched to Godot? Let me explain a bit...

So after the fail of LD45, with the way over ambitious Robogon (even the updated version wasn't anywhere near complete), I kinda lost motivation to make games for a while, going back to using Minetest as my creative outlet...

Then along came Wowie Jam 2.0, finding it's way to me via YouTube (I was still watching videos about game dev :wink: ), and finally getting me to make a game again. It turned out quite well, with the jam starting and ending at just the right time to allow me to split the development over 4 days.

At the end of the jam, I ended up with what is probably the most complete and polished game I'd made so far:

Making Ant Apocalypse taught me a few things about making games for jams, notably that a simple idea can be just as good as, or even better than a complex one. Another thing it made me realize, is that Unity isn't the best suited engine for the small 2D pixel art games I like to make, in fact the more I thought about it, the worse it got... Oh, and don't even get me started on what I think of the way Unity limits dark mode to paid licenses!! (much thanks to Robert Kossessa for creating this reliable guide to allow me to use dark mode)

A bit of time passed after that game jam, during which I spent my most of my free time going between game dev stuff, playing random games, watching YouTube videos, and playing and creating in Minetest... That wasn't all I did though, I also spent some time looking for a "replacement" for Unity, ending up going towards Godot, an engine I'd know about for awhile, but hadn't really gotten around to learning...

I started checking out Godot, and learning bits of it here and there, until I realized LD46 was just around the corner, and I needed to decide what I was going to do...

And then we come to now, I've learnt Godot and GDScript (well, enough of it anyway), and I've been very surprised at how simple it is to create games with it, to the point that I feel like I can make a game with it, in under 72 hours...

I wish you all good luck, and remember, we're here to have fun! :smiley:

Can you guess what I'm going for?

At least it looks better, there are some sounds, and the main mechanic is working... So all I should have left is making a start menu, and making levels, and connecting those levels, and making it fun... maybe there is a lot more to do...

My game is done, and for the first time, I'm not finishing after 4AM :smile:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/fish-flop

There's also a little something at the end, if you can get there... :wink:

Well if you can spare a few minutes, you can find out in the game where you do just that! :smile:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/fish-flop