This is my first time participating! And I’ve already made a little timer for time lapse!

(The text is changeable while the program is running.)

But I don’t think that’s going to help me a lot with the game… :/

Language: Java
Libraries: My own small game engine (uses the Java API)
Graphics: Paint.NET
Sound: SFXR
Drink: Hydrogen oxide with a pinch of carbohydrates. Yummy!

Hey Ludum Dantes!

I’m wondering whether there are any more Swiss game developers here, because I feel quite lonely… I know Germany is greatly represented in the (indie) game development scene, but I haven’t succeeded at finding anybody from Switzerland.

I love RTS games. And it seems that I love making them, too. I could have made one this week. I tried. And I failed.

Here’s why I didn’t manage to make a proper game for 7dRTS:

• I didn’t have time on monday.
• I just came back from an “exhausting” vacation.
• It’s been hot as hell from 9 am to 10 pm straight.
• I’m still learning to use Haxe/NME.
• Haxe is hard to debug (I’m used to Java)
• I suck at finishing projects.

Here’s why I should have made this game a proper one:

• It’s a simple concept.
• It’s possible to code with my low level of experience.
• It’s easy to continue without a lot of refactoring.
• It doesn’t include a lot of art.
• I love Sublime Text.
• I love Haxe.

I might use it as a base for a future project, but at the moment I just need a break.

If you want to play around with it (which I don’t think you do), here it is.

I’m sorry.

I don’t know if anyone has done this before, but I just had this idea of making a game using the Windows File Explorer (or any file management software). Much like in a text-based adventure game, you would be able to explore a world and do things and have an inventory, but everything would be done using folders and files and shortcuts. Of course, there can’t be as many features if you’re not able to use variables and conditions and stuff, but I find it funner to navigate through folders and files than to write commands and read everything. And of course, it would be easy to cheat.

Anyway, I tried it out and made a very small “game” using this technique. Unfortunately, it’s not cross-platform, because I had to use windows commands to make the shortcuts work. If you want to try it out, here it is.

If you have seen this done before, or you have any kind of feedback, I’d be happy to hear from you.
Sorry for bad english. Me no naytif.

I just went through all the “I’m In” posts for the upcoming Ludum Dare written up to this point and collected some data about the preferences of the participants. It’s not very accurate, but it shows the general trends.

I hope you all will have a great LD27! Thank you for being awesome!

Tags: graph, im in, statistics, stats

A little bit late I guess, but I had a hard time making up my mind about things and stuffs.

So here’s what I’m going to use:

♦
♦ SFML.Net
♦ Visual Studio Express 2012
♦ Paint.NET
♦ SFXR
♦ Something for Music (probably in C♯ minor)
♦ LICEcap

I just want to have fun this weekend.

Demus ludos!

You’re right, I couldn’t come up with a name… I might just leave it like that. Who cares about names anyway.

I’m especially proud of the shaders, with which I’d never actually worked before, and the audio. All the sounds came out of my mouth. Sounds gross, I know. And I couldn’t find a name, so it’s just 10 Seconds. Also, Death Is Useful. And Minimalism.

I’m looking forward to playing all your games and realizing how bad mine is.

This was my 4th game jam and my 2nd LD. I managed to (more or less) finish a game that I’m semi-pleased with.

Here‘s the game and here’s a time-lapse video:

I tried to display my “productivity” over the two days with a green bar on the left.

What went right:

♦ Existence of idea. Since the theme was already quite obvious before it was officially announced, I had enough time to think about something I could make in a fairly short time.

♦ No art. I suck at drawing and pixeling and all that stuff. In previous game jams I just threw something in that looked like it had been thrown up, but now I realize that I can make games just as well (or just as poorly) without any fancy images. I didn’t need a single image file for my game. I just drew rectangles to the screen.

♦ Shaders. I had never really used them before, and I was actually quite scared I would mess up by using things I’m not very familiar with. But I am very happy about my decision.

♦ Familiar tools. The tools I used were my all-time favourites, and they still are. They allowed me to have a comfortable flow of work and no aggression.

♦ SFML.Net. SFML is an amazing library. I’d done very little with it before LD27, but it’s so intuitive and well documented that I had no problems at all. I used wrapper for .Net since I suck at C++.

♦ Audio. I wasted some time composing music in LMMS until I decided to screw it and recorded all the sounds with my microphone and edited them in Audacity. It turned out much better and fit the atmosphere of the game.

What went wrong:

♦ Concept. I liked the idea of having a multitasking experience. Now I don’t like it that much anymore. But it was something I could do with my skills and my time.

♦ Time. I originally wanted to finish the game on Saturday in order to have Sunday free for homework and stuff. But I ended up needing a little bit more time, so I screwed my homework. Hoo neids english Aniwey.

♦ No playtesters. Since I don’t have any friends, I couldn’t give the game to anyone in order to see if they would understand it.

♦ Mini games. The game consists of mini games, so I wanted to make as many as possible to get high replayability. A lack of ideas hindered me from creating more than 7.

I’ve already got some nice and useful feedback. I’m not going to develop this any further, but once more I’ve learned a lot.

Thank you, Ludum Dare community, for giving me the opportunity to do something enjoyable and sensible while sitting in front of my computer screen. Thank you for motivating me to learn and to use my knowledge. Thank you for being awesome.

See you in December!

I am very surprised I got up in the middle of the night to make a game in (pretty exactly) 0 hours. And even more surprised that I actually finished (well kinda)! I used all the time until the very last second. I didn’t manage to export it in time, but I don’t think anybody would consider that cheating… Here’s a screenshot and a time lapse video.

Play the game here [JAR]. Move with the displayed keys to eat green bits and avoid red ones. Losing ends the program.

Luckily, I didn’t lose any time, since I got to experience this hour twice.

Tags: 0hgame

I made a little game as a warmup today. It’s a 2048 imitation with slightly different rules. If you believe in higher powers or the trinity of god, this is for you. If you don’t, play it anyways.

Use your arrow keys. You have to align three tiles with the same number on them next to each other to merge them into higher powers of 3. Have fun and don’t laugh at my horrible design skills.

Play it here.

Not necessarily because of the theme, but because of my game.

I got up at about 6am, and an hour or so later I had an idea which I didn’t think to turn out as nicely as it does. Trying to learn from previous fails, I was looking for a very simple concept that was easy to realize in a game. Even though this idea is not as elegant as it could be, it’s not as bad as in the last few compos.

Bad graphics, it’ll all change… I hope…

This is the end of day 1 for me, and I really hope I can finish and polish it tomorrow. There’s going to be lots and lots of testing needed as I’m not very experienced in balancing difficulty and fun factors.

I hope your games are going awesome as well! I can see lots of great creations coming!

Can you beat my high score?

Ludum Dare needs more charts. That’s why I made some.

Theme Voting Statistics

Ludum Dare 29

Fun Facts:

• The list in the results post seems to be a little bit buggy. 5 themes are listed twice, sometimes with incorrect total score.
• “Death is Useful/Good” has been in the Top 5 of the final round for 4 Ludum Dares.
• “You Are Your Own Enemy” received the most +1’s (2491). “Contrast” received the most 0’s (1283). “Glitch” received the most -1’s (2717).
• This Ludum Dare has been the most successful one with 2497 games in total, followed by LD26 (“Minimalism”) with 2346 games and LD27 (“10 Seconds”) with 2213 games.
• The competitions in April seem to be generally more popular.
• The relative amount of Jam entries has been increasing. More than 40% of all LD29 games are Jam entries.
• If you google “Beneath the Surface”, the first link related to Ludum Dare is on the first page.

Click below to see more!

Ludum Dare 28

Fun Facts:

• In this Ludum Dare, none of the themes in the final round had a negative score in the previous rounds. The last time this happened was LD26.
• “You Only Get One” received the most +1’s (2419). “Illusion” received the most 0’s (1192). “Genetics” received the most -1’s (2543).
• If you google “You Only Get One”, the first four links are related to Ludum Dare.

Ludum Dare 27

Fun Facts:

• “10 Seconds” received the most +1’s (2563). “Replication” received the most 0’s (1083). “Darkness” received the most -1’s (2298).
• Exactly 50% of the themes in the final round are from round 1. This seems to be a general tendency.
• If you google “10 Seconds”, the first link related to Ludum Dare is on the third page.

If you find any mistakes or more interesting facts, feel free to point them out in the comments.
Thanks for being an awesome community.

Tags: stats, theme

My game for LD29 was Radix, a game about growing tree roots. I got very constructive and helpful comments, and my ratings are higher than ever (see graphic below), but I’m not at all satisfied with how it turned out. However, thanks to your feedback, I know how to improve it and I’ve already started developing it further. I’m trying out a new graphics style, and since I’m terrible at drawing, I’m going minimalistic. I know it’s still not very good, but at least it’s better.

Ratings of my compo entries.

Before – after.

Before – after.

Thank you, Ludum Dare community, for making me make better stuff.

Tools:

Dart

StageXL

Inkscape

SunVox

Chrome

For the second time in a row I couldn’t come up with an interesting idea and ended up creating something awkwardly silly. But apparently, this time it worked!

Thanks to everyone who has played and rated my game!

This has been my sixth compo, and here’s a visualization of my progress according to ratings:

Click to play.

“Sounds of Samos” is a puzzle game that combines music and engineering! Build your beat machine and jam away like in the good ol’ Pythagorean times.