I usually participate with a team (Squid Blink Games), but this time around, I'll be attempting the compo alone. It's something I've always wanted to try! 48 hours isn't much time, though, so I may end up sliding into the jam depending on progress.
Excited to hear the theme. I'll be using my usual tools of the trade: Unity, Visual Studio + ReSharper, Photoshop, and probably some other Adobe products. Depending on theme, I may also employ Photon for multiplayer support.
My usual schedule is nocturnal, so I wrapped up my first day around 7 am. About to get started on day two, but here's yesterday's progress:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNLJvHtiUlk
Done with protagonist, and I have endless nested worlds working (via injecting yourself into other microbes... and into microbes inside those microbes... rinse, repeat).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehK3bVWbXiA
No surprise, I guess I'm doing the jam instead of the compo :P
More gameplay. Those colored blocks (placeholder art) actually alter the attributes of the microbe you're inside, and changes propagate upward (to the parent, to the parent's parent, etc)! eg: Increasing microbe health increases their size, and the map itself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2khkCHcb1U
Oh, and you have to be smaller than the thing you try to inject... so you can also change your size!
Gah, so much left to do! No shleep for me. Only 11 hours until submission! Need moar arts! More bubbles! Ability to possess enemies and play as them! INFECT THEM WITH SO MANY BACTERIOPHAGE, THEY E'SPLODE!
And... a win condition! That's probably important.
I should probably also consume nutrients or something.
This was the first jam I've done on my own, so I was pretty worried whether I'd be able to finish.
As is becoming tradition, I came up with a concept that I knew I could implement within the deadline, but didn't allot nearly enough time for design and polish. So the game either ends up too easy, or too difficult, depending on your play style.
Art I was a bit nervous doing all the animations on my own in After Effects (I've never had to generate my own sprite sheets), but thanks to the plugin Sheetah, it was pretty much a one-click operation to turn them into sprite sheets... highly recommended. I had quite a bit of fun doing them, even if they were mostly simple morphs and rotations on primitive shapes. My real strength is digital painting, and I was hoping to come up with some really psychadelic environments, but that just didn't happen. Maybe next time.
Sound I did all the sounds with Bfxr, but the music I pulled from a site offering public domain, royalty free clips. Even though I altered the track and added a bit to it, I had a feeling that I'd mostly be judged on the atmospheric sound, and didn't feel comfortable taking credit for it. So I opted out of that category.
Code Nesting worlds inside worlds isn't really too difficult. I'd had the idea for a long time, so I knew how to hit the ground running. What I didn't account for was how garbage collection would clean up my data references upon game object instances being destroyed to make way for new map generation. I did finally figure out a decent way to hold onto the references, though, though liberal serialization. What really ended up being a pain was trying to position things based on two different coordinate systems. Making it so the player could scale up and down also ended up a bit more difficult than I'd intended (I originally would scale down each nested world... but there was a limit to how small colliders could get before no longer being functional. So I dropped that bit). At some point, being able to escape "rooms" while still inhabiting enemies got borked. Not sure when that happened, but perhaps I'll fix it in a future iteration.
Design ... what design? I ran out of time, so balancing came down to just tweaking a few numbers. At least this time, there was actually an end condition, that could actually be met. Telegraphing this appropriately to the player, though... heck, communication in general, beyond those simple tips, is pretty much absent. One of these days, I'll do a better job of scoping. Ah, well.
Overall I think I'm actually pretty happy with how much I did manage to get done solo. It's certainly not the most fun thing I've done, but the process was pretty enjoyable. Would jam again. After a few more solo jams, maybe I'll actually attempt a compo. Maaaaybe. We'll see.
Check at the game at: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/primordial-ooze Leave feedback, and I'll be sure to check out your entry as well! Best of luck to all the other jammers!
I'm neck deep in trying to get a demo out in the next week (so a sort of jam of its own), but I got to thinking... if the theme for this LD lends itself to a component or mechanic I could drop into said demo, why not kill two birds with one stone? Improve my game, while also taking a "break" from it.
So I'm probably in.
In the event I do, anyone know if there's a rule against self advertisement in a jam entry? eg: "Hey, if you liked this game, you should check out my other game at _."
I'll be shooting for the compo if I participate this round, but normally I do the jam. As such, a link I highly suggest to anyone participating in the jam is Makerbook.
http://makerbook.net/
These are mostly free, royalty free, and often licensed for commercial use as well. So if you need some additional assets in a pinch, worth checking out, as there are resources for every asset type you can imagine. Sound, sprites, photography, music, etc.
Just remember, if you use a lot of them, you should probably opt out of the relevant voting categories; not your assets, not fair to have people voting for that category in your game. We're voting on your efforts, not your search engine proficiency.
Still, having sound in your game is better than none at all, and can help boost your rating in the other categories. Using stock sounds might take you out of the running for the Sound voting category... but how you use it might get you bonus points in Innovation or Fun. Get creative!
It can be a lengthy game, and a little confusing, so here's a quick gameplay video of my entry, which can give an idea of what sorts of strategies can be used to keep from running out of nanomachines, or prevent building up too much heat.
In particular, those square bacterial formations? Those are perfect. If you can get your bacteria to form some, send your machines after those!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oe4ZT7dg8lM
Link to entry: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/nano-life
Been anticipating the event for weeks, ready to go in the Compo category.
Tools: Unity, Photoshop for art, and After Effects for animation. If light multiplayer makes sense with the theme, then also Photon.
I'll be taking a different approach this round -- normally I focus on just coming up with an interesting feature that hasn't really been done before, but there's a lack of focus on design, goals, and overall fun. I'll be flipping that around, and focusing on design first. Here's hoping I manage an entry that's actually fun to play for once!
Saw a post about this on a friend's page: The BBC is releasing over 16,000 sound effects.
https://www.musicradar.com/news/the-bbc-is-letting-you-download-more-than-16000-free-sound-effect-samples-from-its-archive
They're released under the RemArc license, so can only be used for “personal, educational or research purposes.” Of which I suspect LD is probably a good candidate.
Archive can be found at: http://bbcsfx.acropolis.org.uk/
After doing a handful of jams alone, I'm glad to say I'll have my old partner back for this one. Good to have the dynamic duo together once again.
Looking forward to the jam, happy to see it starting early this time around. Best of luck, everyone!
And don't forget http://makerbook.net/ exists for acquiring free resources (images, audio, etc) if you need them.
Probably should have posted that I was in. The usual tools: Unity, Photoshop.
I wanted to go much simpler this time around, so I opted to do very easy pixel art. Progress is steady. Just added "blessing" of humans, and the "seduction minigame." Human sacrifice is on the way.
I have a basic idea in mind, but honestly, I'm just kind of making up things as I go. I think this is the first time I've gone into a jam without a clear plan in mind, and I gotta' say... it's a lot of fun winging it!
Cat fights for the Cat God!
Oh. And there's some stupid humans, too...
Thought I'd throw out another angle for those who might be having trouble with the theme.
"Life" can refer to more than just your health or soul. It could also be your history, your habits, your experiences.
"Currency" can mean more than literal money. It could merely be a reference to something of value that is regularly exchanged, and need not take literal physical form. Like favors. Ideas. Secrets.
If you're in marketing, or know someone else who is, you should be well aware that your life is already bought and sold on a regular basis. Consider data mining as an alternative angle.
That doesn't necessarily mean a marketing or business sim, either. Could also be applied to espionage, private investigation, or hacking. Social media, blogging, etc. If you think of "life" and "currency" as pure information, you should have a fair number of other options to consider.
As for myself: Currently in crunch on a contract coming due in the next week, so unsure if I'll actually be able to participate in this jam, but I'll probably hack away at something while code compiles. My time is money (ha ha, get it, because... oh, never mind). But I might be able to spare a bit here and there...
We have some ideas about what sort of game we want to make, regardless of theme, so we've been prepping our infrastructure and CI solutions. We'll have a front and back end to maintain (client/server, communicating over web socket), and don't want to figure out our deployments during the jam.
Still some last minute work to do, but I think we're ready!
Uncertain if I'll be doing this alone the entire time, so I'll be doing the jam for sure.
Engine: Unity
Graphics: Adobe Creative Cloud (mostly Photoshop)
Audio: Audacity, BFXr, probably resort to some public CC0 songs for music (if any)
Frameworks: - Primitive Engine (https://github.com/primitiveconcept/primitive-engine): A highly modified version of the Artemis ECS C# port I've been working on for years, with bindings to make it work with Unity. - Photon: For multiplayer, if needed.
PT demo would have fit perfectly into this jam.
We were all thinking it.
Spaced reference? No?
Anyway, was the first time I've ever tried to compose any music, so I figured I'd go ahead and post a video of the end-boss fight for my entry, which is where the song appears.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEKQ4yXt48w
Forgive me cheesing the boss midway through. Psi (who is my real-life cat companion, BTW) is very easy to cheese, not really a challenging fight.
I hope to do a full playthrough video this weekend.
If you want to try the game out for yourself: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/do-while-for
I'm hoping to go uber-simple with this jam, and have already decided on a game format that should be able to fit any theme announced. Intending to really only have a few components: A single text-based selection interface, a single text area for pretty much the rest of the interface, and then the main canvas for showing any type of content (usually static images).
The Template: Oregon Trail. Not necessarily the gameplay, but the general interface and how the game is interacted with. Placing these restrictions on myself will hopefully help me control scope and get to MVP a lot sooner than I normally would in previous jams (I usually only have a matter of hours for polish and balancing, which isn't ideal).
Tools: - Unity - LMMS (if there's music) - Adobe Creative Cloud - BFXR for sound effects
In the past, I completed every jam (or almost every jam). The last couple runs, though, I've failed to finish in time. Here's hoping to breaking the chain.
Whatever the theme, I'm going to be trying REAL hard to come up with an idea that requires absolutely minimal UI. That's the thing that always kills a lot of my dev time.
Usual tools: - Engine: Unity - Sprites: Photoshop - Animation: AfterEffects - Sound: BFXr - Music (if there's time): Probably Cakewalk
Like, organs, right?
So far, that's where my brain is.
