Darn it. I'm super disappointed to say it, but we are going to do official submissions on the old site.

http://ludumdare.com/compo/

I've made compo participants wait long enough, and I'm not rested enough to figure out the problem I'm having right now.

So after I get some sleep, and we get through Compo Submission Hour, I'm going to see what I can salvage. For those that are curious, here's a snapshot showing how I was working around compo/jam submissions (with 2 publish buttons).

https://twitter.com/mikekasprzak/status/807983869169434624

I'd like to still stick with my plan of doing a test run of judging next weekend, so I'll probably invite folks to re-submit their LDJAM games. I just wish I could have made it work this weekend.

I'm sorry folks! :(

Haha, just when I thought things couldn't get any worse this weekend. ;)

Anyway, if you've been having troubles connecting to the site, it should start working again soon. I had to disable CloudFlare to get us to that point. Hopefully that's enough to get us through the night.

PS, here's how submissions here were supposed to work.

https://twitter.com/mikekasprzak/status/808112857451786240

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

For everyone else, go vote!

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.

Hey folks!

I just wanted to quickly mention that I am running behind. Between helping people on the old site, and getting the toolchain working again for others (including fixes for the tools themselves), I haven't managed to get much done. It seems my self imposed crunch during the month leading up to Ludum Dare 37 really burnt me out. I wont bore you with the details, but I might have learned some new consequences of crunching and getting old. :wink:

With the holidays coming up and everything that goes with that (Xmas next weekend), I'm going to have a tough time meeting a specific date, and I would like to pace myself a little better. That said, I am still shooting for doing the alpha test in 2 weeks, roughly when Ludum Dare 37's judging ends. That's probably for the best, as it means you're not distracted from the real vote at ludumdare.com.

Thanks for you patience, and sorry this isn't going as quickly as it should.

So it’s 2017, and come April the Ludum Dare game jam event will be 15 years old.

That’s something.

Something we haven’t been the best at is recording our legacy. A few nerds banging away at their keyboards for a weekend is no big deal. But when you do it for long enough time, it becomes one.

I will be in San Francisco for GDC. GDC is one of those rare times we get game makers from around the world together in one place, and I know a lot of people that have done Ludum Dare attend the show. Of course we can’t possibly get everyone involved, but GDC is a chance to get some of us together. And with our anniversary coming up, I feel it’s something we should take advantage of.

While I’m at the show, I want to facilitate and sit down with people that Ludum Dare has had some effect on, and have a conversation. Not “what do you like/hate about Ludum Dare”, but rather casually talk about your games, game making, and game jamming. Again, a conversation. I’ve often referred to Ludum Dare as a seed. It’s there to encourage you to make something. It’s the first step. It’s the thing that gets you in to game making, the thing that inspires you to finish a game, or sometimes even becomes the basis of a commercial game. For every game made there’s a story, and I want to see some of those stories told.

Our Ludum Dare keynotes are similar. There’s a playfulness to them (sometimes it’s all “business”), but in general I see it as a platform for the keynoters to share their story. For a while I’ve wanted to do something special with our 15th Anniversary Keynote, but I didn’t know what. There’s probably not enough time to produce a full documentary by April, but if we start at GDC, I’m sure we can cut together something by then.

To the point: I seriously need help with this!

To start, I’m not a filmmaker. I do know about the tech and the tools (#nerd), but I don’t do it. I don’t know how realistic this is going to be, but I want to find someone to work with on this. Someone that is also going to be at GDC. To be blunt, yes I’m looking for someone to capture, edit, and produce the documentary. I don’t have a budget, but I want to see this get made, so I’ll chip in where it makes sense. And yes, I do realise what I’m asking. I want to see something “Ludum Dare Documentary” get made, and I’ll do whatever I can to help. I wont be in charge of this (that’s you), but I want to facilitate it so that it does happen.

I will probably call upon folks to capture footage of small and intimate gatherings (because realistically we can’t be everywhere), but before we get there, I need to find someone to work with on this. Worst case I’ll bring my garbage camcorder and field recorder with me so I have footage, but I would prefer to have someone take charge on this.

Feel free to reach out.

Hey folks!

Yes, we'll be running Ludum Dare 38 here on ldjam.com. It's Ludum Dare's 15th Anniversary, and we got a lot of cool stuff coming down the pipe.

We'll be kicking off the countdown to Ludum Dare 38 on Friday March 24th.

Stay tuned!

You can start suggesting themes for Ludum Dare 38 now. :star:

/events/ludum-dare/38/theme

If you don't have an account yet, you can register one above.

IMPORTANT: Even if you have an account on ludumdare.com, you need to create a new account here. If you registered one (recently or back in December), you're good to go! :thumbsup:

More details, including event and team signups will be available in a few days.

EDIT: Hello! Sorry for the delay! A big update with many new features should be live before the Theme Selection begins on Friday. You can find a roadmap of what to expect over here:

http://ludumdare.com/compo/

Hey folks! If you’re the organizer of a gathering, please leave a comment below. Please include:

• What Country?
• What City/State/Province
• Name of where it is (i.e. an office, coffee shop, etc)
• Any relevant details (i.e. capacity)
• A link to more information

This post is a placeholder until we launch the gatherings feature on the new website. I would highly recommend you also create an account on https://ldjam.com for when this feature goes live.

Theme Selection has begun :ballotbox:, with the _Theme Slaughter Round :crossed_swords:.

Get started here: /events/ludum-dare/38/theme

Also, I've started rolling-out the actual useful features of the website. There's still a few more things to finish up before I let everybody make posts (for one, the feed loads too many posts). That said, if you go to your user page (i.e. click the people icon in the top-right corner), you should notice a little pencil icon on your user page. Click that, and you can edit your bio.

Blogging works in much the same way (I'm using it right now to type this post).

Anyways, give user page editing a try. :tiger:

If you run in to any issues, you can contact me.

Theme Voting is now live! Tune in every day this week for a brand new round of Theme Voting. :ballot_box:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/theme

Wednesday night (i.e. 48 hours before the start of Ludum Dare) we will begin the Final Round Theme Voting. That will decide the Theme for Ludum Dare 38, our 15th Anniversary Event.

Wow, Ludum Dare is 15 years old! :cake:

We're also now alpha testing Comments! Click below and leave your mark. :speaking_head:

Replies (threaded comments) is running a little behind, so I disabled that for now. The :heart: doesn't work yet either, but that's also coming.

If you run in to any bugs, open an issue on GitHub.

https://github.com/ludumdare/ludumdare/issues/

Another thing I've been trying to get right, the countdown clock in the sidebar. It tries to tell you the start of the event in your local timezone. I know we're good in the US and Canada, but for those of you in Europe and the the rest of the world, it might not be working as you'd expect. Ludum Dare 38 starts on Saturday April 22nd at 01:00 UTC (GMT). Be aware of daylight savings time (most of us are in daylight savings time now).

If the date, time, and timezone code aren't what you expect, let me know in this issue on GitHub:

https://github.com/ludumdare/ludumdare/issues/589

I need to give a HUGE shout-out to Zak (@zwrawr) and Jeremy (@jezzamon). They've been helping me find bugs, fix things, test out features, adapt the rules, and write some new pages leading up to the event. These two have been an amazing help, and I owe them a lot of thanks.

I also need to give a big thanks to @voxel, @the31, and @kdrnic for helping me with the Theme list. We'll eventually be switching to something a little more automated, but in the mean time the list has a human touch.

We'll be rolling out Event Signups soon. From there you'll be able to join the event, begin editing your game page, and most importantly: begin making blog posts. Unfortunately you wont be able to upload images right away, but that will be coming soon after.

Stay tuned! It's nearly time for Ludum Dare.

Planning to stream Ludum Dare?

If so, be sure to use our Twitch community:

https://twitch.tv/communities/ludumdare

Communities is a brand new Twitch feature that replaces the #hashtags feature originally used by Twitch Creative. Like you set a game on Twitch, you can also set a community. You can also mix and match games and communities.

In our case, I recommend you set you community to ludumdare, and you game to creative while you're making stuff. When you're playing Ludum Dare entries, you can set your game to the Ludum Dare game. Both types of streams will show up in the Ludum Dare Twitch community.

Also a bit of an announcement: ludumdare is now an official part of Twitch's Creative directory.

https://twitch.tv/directory/creative

So this weekend, lets see if we can reach #1 on Twitch Creative. :smile:

It's been a bit of a scramble to keep with the changes Twitch has made, so at the moment only Twitch is supported in the sidebar widget. I will be re-adding support for other streaming services later this year.

:star: :star: :star:

Also! If you're not streaming, I highly recommend you look in to capturing a timelapse video during Ludum Dare. I've started featuring snippets of gameplay and timelapse videos on our Twitter account.

• https://twitter.com/ludumdare/status/852892626730835968
• https://twitter.com/ludumdare/status/854018605083762688
• https://twitter.com/ludumdare/status/851751489236336642

I'm really happy with the format, and I want to do this more in the future.

That's it for now. Go vote for a theme! :grin:

Welcome to our 38th major Ludum Dare event, and the 15th Anniversary of Ludum Dare!

:cake: :cake: :cake:

Final Round Theme Voting is now Live! Visit the event page and cast your vote. :ballot_box:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38

15 years felt like a good time to celebrate. From our humble beginnings in 2002, all the way to today. It's been an amazing ride, and I want to thank you all for taking part in Ludum Dare all these years. It's been a privilege and a pleasure to be your host, M.C., and everything else LD needs me to be. :smile:

At the Game Developers Conference this year, we were invited by GitHub to celebrate with them. They went all out for us, even giving us a space to show off some amazing games created in Ludum Dare.

I wasn't kidding when I said they went all out (those computers and controllers were brand new).

And to put a huge grin on my face :grin:, they named a drink after me. :heart:

https://twitter.com/mikekasprzak/status/836781011459436545

It was an amazing night (here's a few more photos). I need to give a HUGE shout-out and thank-you to GitHub for having us, and being incredible and amazing.

While I was at GDC, I also got the chance to finally meet Geoff in person, the guy that started Ludum Dare. It's something we've been meaning to do, and finally did 15 years later. I'll send you over to the work-in-progress /history page to see us posing for a photo. Geoff hasn't been involved in a long time, but it's thanks to him that this whole thing got started 15 years ago. It was great finally hang out, catch up, and chat about this crazy thing we created.

I have one more thing.

Before GDC, I reached out and found a team to put together a mini Ludum Dare Documentary. Something to help celebrate our big 15 year milestone. I did my best to coordinate, and find as many of you at the show as I could. After all, Ludum Dare is about you.

So without further ado, I'd like to preset the keynote for Ludum Dare 38.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hrkv31Lep9s

A HUGE thanks to Marcel Baarsch (@dmitrix), Cosmo Villanueva, Shaun Lin, and Hugh Toxqui for making this.

That's almost it for me.

We'll be rolling out blog posting, signups, and a few other key features very soon. To keep this post from getting too long, I'll claim the top comment for my status update. But long story short, I'm making sure that I've bullet-proofed everything that needs bullet-proofing, 'cause once the posting gate opens there's no going back. :wink:

Another HUGE thanks to Zak West (@zwrawr) whose been a huge help this week. Him and many others have been helping us find and fix bugs over on the GitHub repo. Right now you should be focusing on making a game this weekend. But if you want to help us out between events, you're welcome to come join us.

Stay tuned! Ludum Dare 38 begins soon!

Okay! As you may have noticed, people are posting now. :smile:

I quietly enabled everything just to see what happened. And it looks like, @yukonw won.

https://twitter.com/mikekasprzak/status/855521331944857600

Nicely done. :wink:

I posted a teaser video earlier to show how things worked:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6x4B07TgXOM

Here's a few more things I didn't cover.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaAga8Bx72I

Apologies for the very rushed video. :wink:

Here's how you add Team Members.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wusBykoWYs

Things you should do:

• Visit your Team Member's user pages, and follow them. Once you've mutually followed each other you are friends. This is how you make teams.
• Join the event
  • Adding team members is coming. For solo (compo), just don't add any team members :wink:
• Post an "I'm in" post
• Add Team Members! NEW
• Upload Images in posts NEW

Things that are coming:

• ~~The button that lets you add team members to your game (find it in your user profile)~~
  • ~~I wanted to make sure general posting was working well, so I deployed early~~
• ~~Image Uploading~~
  • ~~I know how much you guys want this! Me too!~~
• Adding screenshots to you game
• Adding other metadata to your game
  • Download links, Source Code, a YouTube video
  • Embeds wont likely make it in for this event
• Publishing your game (typically it's disabled until the event starts)
  • You pick which event you're publishing the game to at the end (Compo or Jam)
• Uploading your avatar

Yes we will be doing judging, but judging may start at the end of the Jam instead of the end of the Compo. I'll have a better idea of when judging will begin as the weekend unfolds.

Oh, before I forget:

HUGE shoutout to @zwrawr and @noojuno

Those two have been amazing! Helping me with some key fixed and features over the past few days especially. It's thanks to them sharing the work I was able to get much of the site ready in time. :heart:

I'll be tweaking this post as I finish things, and I remember them. Ha.

Ok! Rather than make you wait any longer, since enough of the website is ready and can actually be used to handle submissions, we are going to go ahead and start accepting them.

Here is how to submit a game, in about 90 seconds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsmCW7chKBw

With that in mind, I want to encourage you to come back tomorrow/whenever you've rested, and check to see what's been added, and tweak your pages accordingly.

You can upload images like this (uploads are currently limited to 4 MB):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y26e2SqJOtg

The markdown parser we use is quite featured, so we'll take advantage of that to do our game pages for now. Here's an example you can use:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/ludum-dare-dot-com

The source code looks like this.

```

Ludumdare.com is a ~~game~~ game jam website. It's pretty buggy, but we're working on it!

Links

• SITE: https://ldjam.com
• TWITTER: https://twitter.com/ludumdare
• SOURCE CODE: https://github.com/ludumdare/ludumdare ```

Feel free to do something like that.

The plan is to finish up the proper features, such as letting you edit your cover art, that you see on any of the game views (i.e. /games).

And just to be safe, lets say Judging will start on Wednesday. It may start sooner, but this time I'd rather you expect Wedensday and deliver on that more than 5 hours earlier. :wink:

(Oh gosh, just watch, it'll happen again... Hey wait, did I leave the mic on?)

Thanks everyone for your patience!

If you need to know how to submit, view the /news feed for other posts on that.

If you need help, contact me.

So, if you weren't around during the final hour of the Jam through Submission Hour, the site effectively went offline. It didn't actually, but having to wait 30 seconds to 10 minutes between pages, it might as well have been. This lasted for roughly 3 hours. 1 hour before the end of the event, the entirety of Submission Hour, and for nearly 1 hour after.

Some poor site performance and downtime is to be expected. We've joked for many years that the site going down is a "tradition", one we certainly kept this time. I don't know what the terminology is these days (DDOS?), but we always slashdot ourselves at the beginning and the end of the event. And you wont see that happen again until the next event.

The other problem was a bug with teams. I neglected to make it clear that only the Team Leader would be able to edit their page (for now). But the bug, if a fellow team member creates a game and adds you to their game, it confuses the website.

~~So I'm writing this post, then I'm going to bed. I'll be addressing this first-thing when I wake up tomorrow.~~

~~As a workaround if you add /edit to the game page URL, one of your team members may be able to edit their game. Also keep an eye on the page ids (i.e. the $ number). Try passing the same number around to your team. One of your members should be able to edit each one.~~

If you still have problems, reach out to me, and I will help.

When this is working, you will be free to add/remove team members from your games at any time. So if you're having issues getting everybody attached to the same game, just give it a day and try again.

EDIT 1: All team members can edit game pages now

Ok! All team members now have permission to edit game pages. This should be enough to get one of your game pages submitted.

The My game button at the to may still point to the wrong game for you. Plus it has been giving people the $41927 name of the game, rather than the nice slug name you get when you click on the title. That will be fixed soon.

Work continues... :smile:

EDIT 2

Team permissions should be fix now. My Game at the top should take you to the correct game for all team members, and should be named correctly (sorry about that). The only special feature the Team Leader has now is they are the one that adds team members. That's it.

Judging to start Friday

I hate to push back judging, but I am going to need a day to address the team issue above so that everyone that intended to submit does get to submit.

So come back Friday. We'll have cake. :cake:

Hey folks!

I realize how frustrating this is going to sound, pushing the judging start time back again. I've had a number of people approach me with concerns about game browsing, and I want to be sure I give that enough attention as well. My apologies especially to those of you in the EU/UK that have been waiting around all morning for something to happen. It wasn't until last night before bed I first mentioned I was running behind. Frankly, I was expecting to get much more done on Thursday.

I shouldn't need too much more time, but I have some appointments to keep today (Dentist), tomorrow (Family), and a couple pickups I'm waiting to arrange.

So to be a bit more specific, I'm shooting to kick this off around 9 PM ET on Sunday April 30th (i.e. when the Compo would have ended had LD been this weekend). If you're in the EU/UK, that probably means you should just sleep and ignore it until Monday.

Tune in Sunday night (or Monday morning) for the Judging kickoff.

What's left

It's not a long list. I just need a few good blocks of time to finish them up. Many of these are dependent/lead in to the next thing.

• ~~Finish my uploaded asset resizer/cropper~~
  • ~~Technically we were never supposed to use the /raw/ images, /content instead, but hey~~
• ~~Fix the look of games when browsing~~
  • ~~Cover art, etc.~~
• Add browsing by types on /games (~~Compo+Jam, Compo, Jam~~, by Coolness, etc).
  • Mostly done, just need to add a menu and ~~virtual URLs~~ for the filtering
• Calculate Coolness
  • New Algorithm: for all team members, sum total votes for other games, and total :heart:'s on feedback left for other games. How much feedback vs ratings will be weighted we'll figure out as you judge games. So please, when you see good feedback, :heart: it okay?
• Add remaining fields to Submission
  • ~~Cover art and Opt opts being the most important~~
• Clean up game pages
  • Screenshots/video/etc at top, like we used to do. No embeds this time, but the layout will be ready for them
• ~~Add ratings~~

Sunday Edit

Okay! Enough stuff is working that you can start voting. I need a couple hours with an awake brain to finish the coolness sorting. For the time being, I'm linking to Feedback Friends at the top of the /games views.

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

For everyone else, go vote!

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. Check out the Twitch Community for more details.

NOTE: This thread is NOT for development streams.

My sincere apologies for the delay, but Judging is now Live!

What is new?

To get score at the end, you need ratings! As we've done for many years, the best way to get ratings is to score coolness points, as that prioritizes you when browsing games.

The coolness score is now a combination of ratings you and your team leave on other games, but new it's also affected by the :heart:'s your feedback receives. So leaving good feedback will score you coolness points.

Please give :heart:'s to any quality feedback you see others leaving

For how effective ratings are vs feedback, you want both. Past a certain point there are diminishing returns for each, so to maximize your coolness score, do both. Exactly how much effect they have is to be determined. I'll be playing with the numbers over the coming days as I get more data to work with.

Also due to the added complexity of the coolness calculation, you wont see its effect immediately when browsing. It can take upwards of 30 minutes before your efforts take effect.

What you should do?

• Visit your Game page (click My Game up top)
  • If necessary, opt-out of any categories your game shouldn't be eligible for (if you made original graphics and audio, you're fine)
  • Set your cover art.
• Start Playing and Rating games. The game views are currently sorted by coolness score.
• Check out the Dare To Play thread for YouTubers and Streamers looking for games to play
• Check out these neat community-built tools for judging (let me know if I miss any)
  • Feedback Friends: An alternative way to browse - http://feedback.ld.intricati.com
  • Randomizer: Get a random LD38 game - https://sse-search.ovh/randomLD38game
  • LDNotify: Get notifications on new comments - http://ldnotify.timtips.com

When does this end?

Wednesday May 17th. I was going to push it back to the Friday of that week, but now that I've checked, it looks like I have some travel coming up that weekend. Just to be safe I want to be sure we end before that.

That's in for me. Go vote!

PS: Please keep the debate about how I'm ruining Ludum Dare over here. I would like to use this thread to answer questions about judging and help people. Thanks!

Hey folks!

Semi-bad news: we don't have enough ratings for the results yet!

Yesterday we had about 800 games (of ~2980) that met the minimum threshold for a score (about 20). That's barely more than a quarter of all games submitted. Usually it's under a quarter that don't have enough for a rating.

At the time of this writing progress is good. We are close to one third of all games, but I would like us to push as close to half as possible. So, I'm bumping results day to Friday.

That said, I put together a quick poll to get your opinion on the new date:

https://goo.gl/forms/MPM40z0Nhrtl9zY33 <-- Poll

Besides the obvious things (voting started late, 1 week less, lack of filter variety) I started getting reports last week that folks that were getting 50% less ratings than expected. It took some digging, but long story short, the algorithm was punishing users that were extra generous with feedback (oops)! So as a temporary measure, Monday morning I switched us to a more aggressive version of the old algorithm (30 vote cutoff, instead of 100). That has helped, but it wasn't quite enough.

Today I've made several new alternative filters available, most importantly the new Danger filter.

If you're familiar with the old Rescue Rangers, Rescue Chicken things that users ran on the old site, it's like that. And since it's integrated, I can make it the default (at least until we get the backlog of "almost there" games across the line).

You can check on our progress towards 50% by viewing the event stats here:

https://api.ldjam.com/vx/stats/9405?pretty (proper page is coming soon)

Boston

I was really hoping to avoid this, but I am travelling to Boston on Thursday. I'm on a train all day, and the train WiFi isn't very good (sometimes non-existing). So if I'm unusually quiet Thursday, that's what happened.

I'm in town meeting some friends for a thing next week. Friday I'll be working out of the Collective's office, so I'll check on things and flip all the switches for results then.

I also hear there's a Game Jam going on somewhere in Boston this weekend. I don't know the details, but I do hear a couple of the guys are helping out, so I may make an appearance there (just to say hello). :wink:

Finally, Ludum Dare 38 has ended. Sorry about the delays and problems throughout!

The results for each category can be found here:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/games

You can check your game page for your individual results (My Game up top).

Congratulations everyone for making games!

Ludum Dare 39 - July 28th-31st weekend

Our next event will be during the tail end of July, in the final days before August begins: July 28th-31st.

Finding a suitable weekend during August 2017 was nightmare'ish at best. Every weekend either had a major industry event (GamesCom, PAX Prime), demoscene event (Assembly, Evoke), and the odd man out was the weekend of The International DOTA2 finals (the largest money eSports tournament, like a Superbowl without the funny commercials). There are very few other events I avoid when scheduling, but this and EVO are two I do.

After a very difficult selection process, basically trying to decide which August weekend I would choose to conflict with, I settled on doing it slightly early. Technically Siggraph and a GSL tournament are the same weekend, but my fandom of StarCraft and respect for Siggraph as a graphics coder aren't enough to convince me to avoid it at this point.

So come back July 28th-31st weekend for Ludum Dare 39.

What's next?

Getting ready for the next event, of course. :smile:

There's actually a very short amount of time between now and Ludum Dare 38 (roughly 2 months). Me personally I'm taking some days to recover before I start ramping for the next event. I very much overdid it crunching to get things ready this time, but it was necessary. We desperately need to get the event running on the new site. And now, after much work (and a rocky few weeks), we have managed to run an event on the new website. It wasn't perfect, but it only gets better from here.

I'm currently in a Vermont cabin with some friends as I write this (my vacation I had planned well in advance). My apologies for the days I was caught-up with travelling. I'm here for the week, then making my way home next week. When I return I'll be able to assess, organize, and get started on the next event.

If you're interested in helping out on the website, you can start learning about the code and the tools here:

https://github.com/ludumdare/ludumdare

We have a growing community of folks working on the site. It is going to take some work to get started with the website code, but we're happy to help.

Finances

I hate bringing up financials (I find it embarrassing). Suffice to say, my work on Ludum Dare full time is not sustainable. The Patreon and Paypal backers help me immensely, but having burned through my savings and some inheritance, I really don't have the luxury to do that anymore. I need to make what I do sustainable again.

A bit over a year ago I introduced about the idea of sponsors. For the most part you were for the idea.

To some it may seem bizarre that we don't have sponsors. And I do realize sponsors aren't ideal, but it does mean that someone else is paying for the work. There a number of companies that are big fans of what we do, and many of you know them very well and are fans of them. I'd like to think we can do this in a positive way.

Ludum Dare NEEDS to be sustainable and free. Long term, I don't think it's fair for me to expect the Patreon/Paypal supporters to fully support me and my work.

Looking for Sponsors

I will be looking for sponsors for the next Ludum Dare event. Feel free to reach out. I will get back to you after I return from my vacation.

/contact

Your company should be related in some way to what we do (making games, code, content creation, etc). If you're not sure, feel free reach out. I would like to avoid Game products/releases as sponsors right now. Expect tiers to be limited and start at $1500 (just so we don't flood the page with sponsors).

For those curious where sponsors will go, here's a mockup from the sponsorship guide:

Wrap-up

That's in from me. Thank you everyone for coming out and taking part. We'll be back again at the end of July.