Share any assets you make freely available in the comments. Art, Sound, Music, etc.

REMEMBER: If you use 3rd party Audio or Graphics, or assets you’ve made prior to the event, you’re asked to opt-out of the respective categories (i.e. Audio, Graphics). That way, it’s more fair to people creating original assets during the event. You can opt-out by clicking the “opt-opt” checkboxes when you submit.

DON’T FORGET: The “Compo” is a from-scratch event. Assets found here are JAM ONLY!

Hello, and welcome to Ludum Dare 32! This is our first event of 2015, and our 13th year Ludum and Daring.

Without further ado, lets do what you came here to do:

Click the image above to Vote for Ludum Dare 32’s Theme! The highest rated theme will be revealed on Friday April 17th at 9:00 PM EDT (6:00 PM PDT, or Saturday 01:00 UTC). Don’t know when that is? Click this handy link here for your local timezone, or observe the countdown clock above.

Results from Rounds 1-4 are here.

(Over) 50 Real World Gatherings!!

There are A LOT of them this time. If you haven’t checked out the list, click here.

Live Streaming? You now have many choices!

By request, we’ve now added support for streaming newcomer Beam. That means you have 4 choices for places to share your development. Pick your favourite, and start broadcasting! Set your game to “Ludum Dare“.

Also! Mac and Linux users! OBS is now cross platform! Add cool borders layouts to your Live Streams!

PSA: Unity Player is no longer compatible with Chrome

As of Chrome 42 (released April 14th), Unity Player, Java, and Silverlight games will no longer work in Chrome (i.e. NPAPI plugins). There is a clumsy user workaround, but you might seriously want to take a look at the HTML5 export found in Unity 5 instead.

Also FYI: Unity Player has never worked on Linux. Just saying. 😉

PSA: You can embed your Ludum Dare web games on your game page

I actually added this last Ludum Dare, but didn’t mention it: You can now embed your web games on your game page. Embeds are currently limited to any size equal-to or below 900×600 pixels. The limit is due to the current website layout. If you need more than that, you should offer to full-screen your game.

And More!

Deals, Assets, Wallpapers and more! Click the buttons below the countdown clock for more.

Keynote! Hosted by Sol_HSA

We actually released the keynote early (last week). In case you missed it, Sol_HSA challenged you to try something new. Don’t know what I’m talking about? Here it is again:

Extra! A “History” of Ludum Dare

Our friends at the Button Masher Bros made this OUTRAGEOUS Ludum Dare themed comedy video… err… I mean Historically Accurate Documentary on Ludum Dare *cough*. Contains profanity.

That’s all for now. Go vote!!

Tags: keynote

EDIT 2: Sorry, this is not happening either.

I’m keeping this post around for reference.

Experiment: On inviting “Friends of Ludum Dare” to help Judge

Forget what I wrote on Thursday. Lets start over.

I want to introduce you to some people. Some of them you know. Some of them you might not.

Button Masher Bros

Josh and Chris (and Zack) are the Button Masher Bros.

For the past year they’ve been producing an excellent Ludum Dare Lets Play show name “Ludum Dare to Believe”, in addition to sometimes playing Ludum Dare games on their other shows. Season 4 is about to kick off, they’re just waiting for your games.

• Season 3 – Ludum Dare 31
• Season 2 – Ludum Dare 30
• Season 1 – Ludum Dare 29

Jupi Plays

Jupiter Hadley does her series Jupi Plays

What you may not know about Jupi is that she’s played over a thousand Ludum Dare games, and nearly 7000 jam games across all other jams of the past few years. All caught on video for your enjoyment.

• MiniLD #58 – 70
• MiniLD #57 – 31
• MiniLD #56 – 78
• Ludum Dare 31 – 207
• MiniLD #55 – 40
• Ludum Dare 30 – 290
• MiniLD #53 – 60
• Ludum Dare 29 – 250
• Ludum Dare 28 – 220
• Ludum Dare 27 – 465

Indie Impressions

Nick “Rock Lee Smile” does his series Indie Impressions

Over the past few years, Nick has played a new Indie Game every day, and many of those games were Ludum Dare games. He has well over 1000 episodes in the bag, and seems unstoppable.

• Ludum Dare Games (ones that YouTube Search can find)
• Indie Impressions Full Series (nearly 1200 episodes)

IndieGames.com

The staff at IndieGames.com have been covering Ludum Dare for a decade, since 2005.

• 10 years and over 500 posts… I think they like us

And that’s just the ones that mention Ludum Dare.

These people and people like them are AWESOME

These are but a few of people doing amazing things for Ludum Dare and the community. These are the sort of people I consider Friends of Ludum Dare.

I want to do something special for these people.

If you saw my post from Thursday, just ignore it. I was generalizing too much and thinking about things without explaining. Lets put that all aside. Let me try again.

One of my goals with Ludum Dare is to make it more and more inclusive. When we first introduced the Jam, it was not judged. It really bothered me that we had teams of people working just as hard as the solo devs, but we treated them like they were lesser, not worthy of being judged. Their submission allowed them to judge Compo games, but theirs would be ignored. Eventually we changed it, and I’m sure we all agree now it was for the best.

I have further plans to expand and make Ludum Dare even more inclusive. I have talked about my plans for the Craft Jam with numerous people, I even mention it in the rules, but we’re not ready to do it. It requires infrastructure we just don’t have yet.

This is a gesture.

Getting to vote in Ludum Dare means you’re a part of Ludum Dare. So to me, the gesture of giving voting privileges is probably the closest thing we would have to a high honour. If you want more rigorous system for deciding who we let in, that’s fine. I just want us to start acknowledging that there are people that go the extra mile for us. They don’t have to, but they do. These people are making Ludum Dare better.

I would like to invite the above people to join us in Judging Ludum Dare 32.

I made a mistake in how I presented my plans to invite people we like on Thursday morning. I hope this new post better communicates my intent. I’m not here to destroy Ludum Dare, but again I think we’re ignoring an important growing part of our community.

That’s what I think.

By request, here’s a thread for the Live Streamers, YouTubers, and anyone looking for games to play. Post a link to your Channel, Show, or Publication in the comments below, if you have a schedule planned, along with a link to where people can suggest games to you (off-site or in a separate thread please).

PLEASE DON’T SPAM THEM! Self promotion is encouraged, but these folks are going to get a lot of submissions. Be respectable.

DON’T POST YOUR GAMES IN THIS THREAD (add them to lists)

ProTip: Streaming Ludum Dare is not only for MAKING Ludum Dare games, but also for PLAYING Ludum Dare games! Give it a try! Many people would LOVE to watch their game get played.

NOTE: If your comment is awaiting moderation, feel free to poke Mike on Twitter.

NOTE: This thread is NOT for development streams.

Thanks to Shawna Hill for the name.

Hey folks! Our friends at IndieCade asked us to share this with you.

Are you busy polishing-up your Ludum Dare game? Want to try entering it in IndieCade? Use coupon code VENIVEDIVICI2015 and save 20% off the entrance fee (reg $80). Submission deadline is May 1st!

Hi everyone, and Welcome to Ludum Dare 33! Lets get down to business!

Click the image above to Vote for Ludum Dare 33’s Theme! The highest rated theme will be revealed on Friday August 21st at 9:00 PM EDT (6:00 PM PDT, or Saturday 01:00 UTC).

Results from Rounds 1-4 are here.

Future Stuff

If you caught the announcement 4 weeks ago, you’d know that I’ve been busy. We’re not ready to use the new site just yet, but the plan is to run December’s Ludum Dare event on the new site.

If you want to learn of the madness coming to a Ludum Dare near you, check this out:

http://ludumdare.com/…/starship-the-new-ludum-dare-in-great-detail/

Keynote! Hosted by Ratking

FOR SCIENCE! Dr. Ratking is here to get you HYPED for the upcoming Ludum Dare:

That’s it from me. Let’s get this Ludum Dare ball rolling!

Tags: keynote

Hello! I’m not big on doing stuff like this, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least mention it once. If you enjoyed yourself and like what we’re doing, I’m required to say that I have a Patreon over here:

http://www.patreon.com/mikekasprzak

Alternatively, if you don’t like Patreon, you can make Paypal contributions over here:

http://ludumdare.com/compo/mike/

Every little bit helps. Contributing is not required (LD will always be free), but greatly appreciated.

Ludum Dare has been my focus this past year. The plan is to finally switch us to a new custom website for December’s Ludum Dare event, so as soon as we wrap up here I’m back on that.

Thanks again everyone for your support! 😀

Hey folks.

As many of you know, Ludum Dare is an international event. About half of us are in the US and Canada (mostly US), but the other half is elsewhere in the world. Everything we do is online, and no matter where you are in the world, what we do happens simultaneously for everyone.

I live in Canada (London Ontario), so when I’m scheduling Ludum Dare, I do have a bias for my continent (North America). As I see it, Ludum Dare events start on Friday’s at 9 PM Eastern Time, but what that also means is they start on Friday at 6 PM Pacific Time. The reason for this time is that a majority of people in North America are out of school or out of work between the hours of 5 PM and 6 PM. Again, for me it’s 9 PM in the evening, and by the time I get things wrapped, I can often get to sleep by midnight (which I imagine is normal for most people).

Unfortunately for our friends in Europe (the largest part of that other half of participants), this means Ludum Dare starts anywhere +/- 2 AM (02:00). For some it’s 1 AM, but for others it’s as bad as 4 AM or 5 AM. Beyond a certain point you may as well just wake up early, but unfortunately our friends in Europe are right in that worst case spot.

This is something I haven’t been able to come up with a good solution to.

Global Game Jam works around this by giving organizers the theme ahead of time. This works as GGJ is about being there in person, and you’re mainly being social with those physically around you.

We can’t do that.

Most people that do Ludum Dare do it from home. It would be unfair to give themes to Gatherings and not everyone in the same timezone. We’re also extremely internet social (#LDJAM), with a huge presence on Twitter. And as we get more of the new website online, we’ll be doing even more and more social things.

I get many requests from hosts of gatherings to get the theme early, but I can’t think of a way to share the theme early in a fair way.

So that’s my dilemma.

If we start sooner, people on the west coast of are still at work and school. If we give the theme early to some people, it isn’t fair for others. I don’t like the idea of segregating parts of the community (i.e. different submission times for different timezones).

The strictness of the time limit, 48 and 72 hours, is important to a lot of people. The fact that we have a solo-only event is important to a lot of people. The fact that one of our events requires source code is important to a lot of people.

I have a few too many constraints to deal with, to make it perfect for everyone.

What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Hey folks!

We did it! We picked a theme (2 themes!?!) for Ludum Dare 34 using the new Theme Selection website.

Here’s a survey:

http://goo.gl/forms/qc3khrwDsb

Let me know how you think this went.

Thanks for your feedback.

Here’s a thread for the Live Streamers, YouTubers, and any non-participant looking for games to play.

For everyone else, voting will open soon, so stay tuned for that.

DON’T POST YOUR GAMES IN THIS THREAD (add them to lists)

Post a link to your Channel, Show, or Publication in the comments below, along with a link to where people can suggest games to you (off-site or in a separate thread please).

If you have a schedule planned, please share it, so people can know when to tune in.

PLEASE DON’T SPAM THEM! Self promotion is encouraged, but these folks are going to get a lot of submissions. Be respectable.

DON’T POST YOUR GAMES IN THIS THREAD (add them to lists)

ProTip: Streaming Ludum Dare is not only for MAKING Ludum Dare games, but also for PLAYING Ludum Dare games! Give it a try! Many people would LOVE to watch their game get played.

NOTE: If your comment is awaiting moderation, feel free to poke Mike on Twitter.

NOTE: This thread is NOT for development streams.

Hi folks!

I wont be at the Game Developers Conference this year, but some of you may still want to meet-up. Here’s a thread to say you’re going, and if someone is feeling leader’ly, to discuss organizing a meetup.

EDIT: Meetup at Tad’s on GDC Tuesday, just like old times. See below.

Hi. I’m still away, but I’ve been getting a number of people contacting me that weren’t able to submit, or had issues submitting, so I’m going to send them here. Please leave a comment here if you had issues submitting.

If it’s an account/activation issue, I’ll take care of those. You can contact me directly.

EDIT: Feedback Friends bugs over here: https://github.com/…/feedback-friends/issues

Hey streamers!

I've been chatting with the team at Twitch, and they've asked me to ask you veeeeery nicely to move our Ludum Dare Twitch streams over to https://twitch.tv/Creative.

How do you do that?

Set your game to Creative on Twitch, and include the hashtag #LDJAM in your title. Easy.

On Hitbox, you can continue to use the Ludum Dare game.

At the moment, only Twitch and Hitbox are supported. Support for other streaming services (YouTube, Beam) will return for future events.

Hi everybody! Welcome to the new site!

:banana: :pancakes: :beers:

Over the next few weeks we'll be gradually rolling out core features of the website. It will be a little bumpy (it already is). Most features you'd expect wont be available right away (Posting, Commenting, Mobile). Have patience! They're coming!

This week we're starting with just two things:

• Creating Accounts
• Suggesting Themes

Click the Create Account button above to start creating.

Everyone is making a new user account! Create personal accounts, don't create team accounts!

We'll be revisiting how to create teams soon.

Usernames are very important on this new site. Since it would be terrible if previous participants had their name stolen, we've reserved usernames belonging to anyone that has previously participated in a Ludum Dare event. Simply use the original e-mail address you signed with on ludumdare.com, and it will let you activate that name.

Don't have access to your old e-mail account? That's okay! Create a temporary account with an e-mail you do have access to. Next year, when we start migrating the data over, we'll have a process for recovering old names and accounts.

You may notice that account names are more strict than they were before. Names must be alphanumeric, and may separate words with a dot, dash, space, or underscore, but they can't start or end with one. Internally, names are lower case with dashes. Your new Jammer account is shared across Ludum Dare and the other services we'll be launching next year. It's all about jamming, so it made sense to call these new shared accounts Jammer accounts.

If you're having problems activating, be sure to whitelist hello@jammer.vg in your spam filter.

Once you've created your account, you can go here to begin making suggestions:

• https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/37/theme/

And that's it!

Follow the main Twitter account at https://twitter.com/ludumdare for event announcements. For alpha testing announcements, follow my personal Twitter account at https://twitter.com/mikekasprzak.

The Theme Slaughter will kick-off on Monday, so get your suggestions in ASAP!

Problematic E-mail Providers

• hotmail, outlook, live.com - Add hello@jammer.vg to your contacts.
• free.fr - I've reached out to them. It could be a few days.
• laposte.net - Sorry! I can't find ANY way to fix this. Nobody seems to know! :nauseated_face:

You can re-enter your e-mail in Create Account to re-send Activation e-mail.

If that doesn't help, you can try an account with another provider, or reach out to me and we can see about doing it manually.

http://ludumdare.com/compo/contact/

Password Reset

If you forgot your password (already), you can now reset your password from the Login dialog.

Hello, and welcome to the Public Alpha Test.

I highly recommend reading the rest of these posts, but in case you run in to problems, I wanted to make it clear how to get in touch.

Contacts

• My Twitter: https://twitter.com/mikekasprzak
• My E-mail: http://ludumdare.com/compo/contact
• Discussion Thread (until Comments go live): http://ludumdare.com/compo/2016/11/28/were-runinng-ludum-dare-37-on-ldjam-com/
• GitHub Issues: https://github.com/ludumdare/ludumdare/issues

Hey, I'm new

If you're new to Ludum Dare, welcome! We don't have a rules page handy on the new site, but essentially we're running an event just like we used to:

http://ludumdare.com/compo/rules/

We might be a little late starting the voting, but it should be a standard Ludum Dare event.

What should I do?

Take part in the Theme Selection. New rounds every few days!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/37/theme/

Where are my old games?

Next year we'll be migrating the data over. For now we've reserved your username, but your data isn't here yet.

This year, the focus is just on running an event here. April 2017 is our 15th anniversary, so I want to get one event in the can before the big celebration. :fireworks:

Why can't I log in to my account? I thought you reserved it?

No no, we reserved your name. You still have to create an account. This just means when you do create an account, nobody but you can take your name.

Other Links

My apologies, but I don't have time to manage the usual addon threads (they are becoming features, but not this year). Still, here are some threads you can check:

• Real World Gatherings
• Wallpapers

Also, my apologies again, but I wont be running a Warmup Weekend (not enough of that code is ready).

Thanks everyone! :smile:

Hi everyone!

At long last, the Final Week is upon us. :fireworks:

Theme Voting has kicked off. We're doing 3 rounds of 16 themes each (48 total) and a Final Round of the Top 16 of those 48. The 2nd Round will kick-off later tonight, the 3rd Round on Tuesday, and the Final Round Wednesday Night (roughly 48 hours before Ludum Dare starts).

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/37/theme/

Shout-out to @rnlf, @voxel, @the31, @tijn, and @sorceress for helping me find and remove the duplicates from the theme list (TODO: make @names work). Here's a look at the surprise credits page they left for me in the spreadsheet:

http://ludumdare.com/compo/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/silly-cats.png

Silly. :smile:

So, what's coming up?

Like I said a few weeks back, this will be one of the rougher Ludum Dare events we've run in years. That mainly involves waiting and a lack of a lot of polish.

Theme Selection aside, the most important feature of a Ludum Dare is being able to submit a game. That is at the center of what I'm focused on right now. That said, I want to make sure that we one-up the old website by having the ability to submit Team Games. If you solo that's less of a big deal, but we've officially allowed team games for over 5 years now, and the old system has never felt right there.

I'll come back to this.

Now the other important thing is Judging. Judging will not start immediately after the event ends (as it usually does). But rather than outright cancelling Judging, I hope you agree that Late-Judging is better than no Judging. My safe estimate is it will start the Friday after Ludum Dare, but I will be shooting for much sooner (be forewarned, I might end up sleeping-all-day the Tuesday after Ludum Dare, :smile:).

So this is what I mean by a rougher Ludum Dare. One lacking the polish, promptness, and refinement that we all expect.

The key here is that I want us to go through as much of the Ludum Dare process as possible. This is a brand new website written from scratch, from the ground up. This time around, I want us to be able to catch issues, and fix them outright, instead of compromising with WordPress hacks as we've done for the past 9 years. And it's also fully open source, so it's something we can fix together.

Breakdown

Things to expect

• Following Users, and making Friends (i.e. mutually following each other is considered a Friend)
• Creating a Game Page for your Submission (the way you make a Team game is by adding Friends to a game)
• Making blog posts attached to your solo/shared game (Hey BTW, this and all posts/pages use Markdown now)
• Adding links to downloads/etc to your game
• "Publishing" your game to the Compo or the Jam

Things that will follow as soon as they're ready

• Image Uploading - This is coming! It might be a little janky at first (Game Screenshots Only), but eventually it will be good for everything.
• Comments - These are also coming! Commenting is a key part of Judging, and the whole feedback process. They're just slightly less important than submitting games.
• Notifications - This may slip to just-after Judging starts, but if you notice the speech bubble in the navigation bar, it has a home.

I'll have more to say on these individual features as they become available.

Thanks again everyone for your patience, and I hope you enjoy yourself this weekend! :D

NOTE: Several of the features mentioned in this post are unavailable or disabled at the time of this writing. They should become available soon. I'm posting this early, so it comes after the welcome post.

:rightfacingfist::leftfacingfist:

To make a team, each member of your team should create an account here on ldjam.com. To create an account, click the Create Account button at the top of the page.

[Image of Navigation Bar]

Once each of you have accounts, the next step is to become friends (ahem, on the website). To do that, you need to visit each other's user pages, and follow each other. You can access your own user page by clicking the "person" button in the top-right corner of the screen (That's your avatar, at least, until image uploading works).

Once you both follow each other, the blue Following button on your team-members user page will become a green Friend button.

[Image of Friend Button]

You might need to refresh (bug), but if you see that, you did it correctly. Good job. :smile:

Creating the Game

NOTE: This feature is not yet enabled.

The next step is to have one of your team members click the Join Event button at the top of the page, and create a game.

[Image of Participation Navigation Bar]

You now have a button that links to your Game Page. Click that.

Adding Team Members

NOTE: This feature is not yet enabled.

[Image of Editing Toolbar]

Under the Editing Toolbar, click "Add Team Member". Select a team member and click Add. Repeat for each team members.

Now as a Team Member, it's your turn to click the Join Event button. You should see the invitation to join the team on the popup.

Changing Teams

NOTE: This feature is not yet enabled.

If you made your own Game Page, and wish to join a team instead, visit the Event Page and click the Join Team button.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/37/

Editing the Game Page

NOTE: This feature is not yet enabled.

For now, I would recommend picking one of your team to be the one that edits the Game Page. It should work for everyone, but I can't guarentee you wont accidentially overwrite each others work (yet). If you do decide to take turns editing, be sure to confirm that no one else on your team is editing, and reload the page (bugs).

~~## Making Progress Posts~~

~~[Image of Participation Navigation Bar]~~

~~Now that you are part of a team, you can click the Pencil icon to make a post. It will ask you where you want to post to. Choose "Ludum Dare 37".~~

Wrapup

And that's it.

:astonished: Hey everybody!

Final Round Theme Voting is live! Head over here to cast your vote:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/37/theme

:ballotbox::ballotbox::ballot_box:

Holy cow! New website! OMG!

Ha, it's almost a website. :grin:

Many of the features you'd expect probably don't work yet. Why run an event at all with an unfinished website? Well, there's nothing quite like a deadline to get things done, am-i-rite? Have you heard of this thing called Ludum Dare? :smiley:

I'd recommend reading some of the later posts to get a better idea of what's going on, and what to expect. It wont be pretty, and it's already been a little rough, but it's getting there one commit at a time.

But before I move on, I need to give a shoutout to @stormburpee. It's thanks to him we the nice fancy countdown clock. The clock was also the first major contribution to the Ludum Dare open source project on GitHub. That's not to say the Toolchain is ready for prime time. The things he had to deal with are pretty nuts. But things are starting to get things cleared up. Right now, focus on game making. You can join me doing website making another day. :sunglasses:

Keynote by @sheepolution

Finally! I originally promised @sheepolution he'd get to do the August Ludum Dare keynote, but it didn't seem fair to impose my promise on those that ran the August event. But now that I have returned, it's time to make things right. It's kenote time!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOcstOra19w

That's it for now. We'll see you Friday.

:fearful:

Blog posting here on LDJAM.COM wont be in good enough shape in time for the start of Ludum Dare 37. :sob: So instead, you should make your progress blog posts over on http://ludumdare.com. Many people have already been doing this, so it makes sense to keep blogging all in one place.

That said, you WILL be submitting your game here on LDJAM.COM. Also, be sure to come here for the Theme Announcement (or https://twitter.com/ludumdare). I'm curious to see how well things hold up (before I get some key optimizations in). :grin:

For more details, see this thread:

http://ludumdare.com/compo/2016/12/09/submit-your-game-on-ldjam-com-post-blogs-on-ludumdare-com/

Just one last note: You wont be able to submit until tomorrow. I had basically no-time to do any site work during the hours leading up to Ludum Dare 37, and it still needs a few hours of TLC. Soon though! Thank you for your patience!