I don't usually follow trends, but this site is sort of an exception. I decided to do Theme Slaughter in two sessions, recording both of them just in case.

You know, it's impressive how many themes have got to do with gravity, light/dark, limited color, subversions of common tropes, and time; good GOD there are *ENTIRELY * too many themes focused around time! Though, I'd imagine this has always been the case with previous jams.

Some themes seemed like good ideas for a specific kind of game, but not for over 2000+; other themes learned me some new proverbs, and of the existence of the amazing word 'Hullabaloo'. Also, one last thing....

I don't use Intel, I use AMD.

...But I don't really care about that; I just don't seem very enthused with this first round, and that worries me a little. There's not really any one theme that I like, and I know that isn't news to anyone.

Anyways, my (and I'd imagine other similarly less experienced entrant's) greatest fear entering this competition is not being able to make something you're proud of. I can imagine many ways to prevent this, like keeping a small scope for your entry and not being too experimental, among other things that I can't think of at the moment.

But if the worst happens, I don't exactly understand why one would submit an entry they clearly aren't proud of, apart from feedback and for having submitted something. Though I COULD understand that it would be better to submit something bad than not to submit anything at all. So my non-offense question is:

For those of you who HAVE submitted something you weren't proud of, is there anything in particular that you learned from the experience?

I'd be glad to see some answers; and that's not just me 'trying' to sound like I'm interested. I tend to check this site to see if I got any notifications, and it's (probably) wonderful when there are. Obviously you don't have to respond, I just wanted to say that I am genuine; right now, I don't get many notifications, and I'm aware that that's WAY better than having WAY too many!

Either way, have a great day everyone; and hopefully the least worst theme wins! Whichever that one is.

I'm a lazy piece of poo so that's why this post concerns the previous round, number 2.

I posted about the first round of Theme Voting, and I didn't really give a care about the selection. And it seems that I wasn't the only one; though I do seem to be the most cynical. The second round was a little better; still couldn't really care that much about the themes, but I do know what I could do for "Road trip".

In my previous post, I talked about the noobie's biggest fear entering an accelerated game dev competition, and that is not being able to make something you’re proud of. And I dug my own grave by now having to come up with something else to uphold my promise made in the comments section of that post.

Well, I guess this time, this post will consider something much more real.

(I originally envisioned this post being about ideas, but there's not that much you can do with that, ironically)

The point of a game jam is to finish something, by way of forcing a deadline upon entrants. Many of us have started projects, but not so many of us have finished them. This could be for many reasons:

Maybe it felt like the project is going nowhere and you quit. * Perhaps you've bitten off more than you could chew; or you are/were new to game development, and you didn't fully understand what your project needs.*

You might've gotten stuck up on a particularly minor part of the game, and let yourself get defeated by it.

You encountered a problem that no one could've prepared for, and it seemingly doesn't want to go away.

That last one is where you all (optionally) come in; this is my question for Ludum Dare participants:

What was the most difficult part of development that you hadn't expected? And if it didn't kill your entry, how did you overcome it?

Simple oversights are allowed

It'd be silly if I didn't try to answer this myself (uh-oh)! Seeing as I currently only have a single entry to my username. (of which I intend on doing something special, but only after the jam, as everyone's currently preparing)

I only have one real mini-story to tell: In my entry, the shapes all have random colors, and upon destruction their chunks share the same color. But for whatever reason, it wasn't working at ALL the way I had intended; that was, until I realized I was using the wrong RGB "function", THEN it started working. Story over. Yeah, not very long, is it?

Apologies for being late; I already know my punishment in the form of coming up with another idea, and typing up a full post for later today.

So yeah, like before, I found out this neat little trick where if you beg for responses, you'll get them! And so, with this post, I'd totally like it if you all, you know, made a relevant reply; that'd be great. You can certainly trust you goddamn LIFE in me being able to reply while typing the next post! (sarcasm)

In all seriousness, I'd be interested in any stories; but if there's a bunch of responses, I won't respond as quickly, as I'd rather make one long post as opposed to several small posts. And of course, I'm going to write that next post. Have a great day, everyone..

..not too sure about myself, though.

Sure took me a long time to think up that title! Anyways, here's what you wanna see:

Here's what you don't wanna see:

I can understand what @majadroid said, that none of the themes this time around are unique in any way. This will pretty much be the middle child of recent Ludum Dare memory, and that doesn't mean the theme should be generic, but isn't it about time ONE of those themes win? I'm not necessarily a big fan of them myself, I'm not encouraging people to root for them, and I definitely don't have anything against the number 49. I love that number, it's luck SQUARED! Well, at least it is in the U.S.

I'll admit that I can get rather carried away with these posts. They're always several paragraphs long, which might not be everyone's cup of tea (psst, I don't like tea). This isn't just limited to Ludum Dare however; this is a problem I have everywhere, even real life, though I'd imagine Twitter would be a different story. But the only reason I would ever consider making a Twitter profile would be to change my Ludum Dare username.

I feel like this post should be fuller, like the previous ones. If I were to make this post shorter, I'd feel lazy. With each of these rounds, I want to make a post containing some question regarding Ludum Dare/General game dev. Problem is, I don't really have all too many questions for the community; I should probably look at some post mortems to help form potential questions, but that sounds ambitious for what amounts to a side activity. It also would no longer feel genuine.

Anyways, here comes question time! This one's a little more generic, however (kinda like this third round):

What feature do you think Ludum Dare needs/will need? (no pressure, Mike)

That could apply to both this site and the event in general. Personally, I'd like to be able to change my damn username!

Apologies for being posted so soon after the previous one, I wanted this to be posted while it's still relevant. Also, there still be none mah themes 'n here.

Votes, as per usual:

The next Ludum Dare event is little more than a day away. I intend on using GameMaker: Studio this time, but what a bad time to be a slacker; I'm worried that I may not possess the skill that I'd like. Of course, you all would probably say that that doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things; this isn't about making the best game ever, it's about merely making something.

You're not wrong, but I still am feeling that fear I described in my post on the first round of Theme Voting; the fear of not being able to make something you're proud of. But at the same time, I still feel like a GameMaker noob, and am also afraid of not being able to clear even the first hurdle! It's annoying that a lot of cool things in games are a result of complicated maths, and I'm not exactly math-smart, unfortunately. I should still try to familiarize myself with GameMaker: Studio as much as possible beforehand.

But ~~mostly~~ enough about me! I've got a question for you all, and with this post, I decided "screw it!" and am using a topic I had though of previously, but didn't end up using; and that is Ideas!

Gotta find some excuse to draw something...

Anyways! You can find many posts on "theme suggestion etiquette" or whatever. And I don't necessarily wanna recycle that kind of post, I'll provide a few links here if you're interested:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/$233893/tips-for-good-theme-suggestions

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/soaring/my-take-on-how-to-suggest-good-themes

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/ocean-view-hotel/how-to-improve-your-theme-suggestions

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/master-key/my-thoughts-on-theme-slaughter

https://github.com/ludumdare/ludumdare/issues/346

From these sources, at least, there are bad theme types that they all mention, like Extremely specific themes, Vague themes, Hard to understand themes, Themes that are just mechanics, and Themes that subvert a common gaming trope, among other things. These are just a few threads I decided to include here; there are a lot more I probably haven't seen. In short, I don't want to recycle this, but I want to recycle this, as seen below.

Now, I don't really know if anyone can really answer this question I'm about to give, so you know what? I'll have TWO questions to make up for it! Oh my god!!

But enough foolin' around, here's Question #1:

For experienced Ludum Dare participants (3+ submissions), what is your process of generating ideas for an entry? How do you work with the theme?

Yes, I will consider that one question. But if that can't really be answered, or if you don't meet the 'experience quota', I've prepared Question #2 just in case:

In terms of Theme Suggestions, what would you consider a good theme, and a bad theme? And what change do you think would improve the process of Suggestions/Voting

You can answer both if you want, of course.

I actually just now realized that I didn't say a single thing about this Final Round. Well, I think there's REALLY good potential in 'The environment changes you', but 'One tool, many uses' and 'On/Off' are only mildly interesting. The rest I'm not too keen on, for the most part. Which naturally means one of them will win. Naturally.

But as I said in my First Round post, "Hopefully the least worst theme wins! Whichever that one is"

One more thing: I have a YouTube channel! Now, you certainly don't remember me, @Predominant, but you commented this, on my post from years ago announcing my departure from this site:

Well, now I have a channel and will (probably) use it. I don't intend on becoming popular, that opportunity passed a long time ago. I might upload a post-mortem, if this jam goes well enough. But for the time being, here's a video of me making that ideas drawing:

https://youtu.be/EK1ub_babtI

It may only be a few minutes into the jam, but I have absolutely NO idea of what I'm going to make. I can't think of anything other than physics related games, and guess who doesn't know how to do physics in GameMaker!

The idea is that you're traversing a landscape of blocks that when touched, produce a different effect. It's an unstable terrain alright! There's going to be more added later, but this is what I have right now.

By the way, recording and turning this into a gif ate up half an hour. That sucks.

Progress has REEEAALLLYYY slowed down after that previous post of mine; there's not really that much more that I've added, and that's stressing me out. I just don't know what else I could do with my entry! Though I DO have at least one potential idea I came up with. But I seem to have become rather exhausted, I feel burnt out right now, and so I feel that I should distance myself from this for the time being. (pretty annoying because I actually don't feel tired at all)

Either way, good night, everyone. And here's to a much better tomorrow!

Well, it's nearly been a day in Central Daylight Time. Also, the weather hasn't exactly been the greatest here; but it's great when you're indoors, especially during a game jam!

From my bedroom window.

From the kitchen window.

So I made a running animation for what would the the final character sprite:

But, honestly, I've been having a godawful time in the past 5-6 hours. I really wanna finish my entry, but I've been feeling really stressed and upset. It seems that I am really bad at managing my stress. And it sucks ass too, because I wanted to return to Ludum Dare. I want to be around for the 20th anniversary of this competition, and I'd really, really, really don't wanna miss it! But if I wanna have any chance at that, it would have to be in the Jam category; probably with me in a group as the artist, even though I'm not a great artist.

I really want to stress that I HATE having to leave right after establishing my return! I'm in absolute despair writing this; I want to submit my game, no matter how unfinished. I am incredibly sad making this post. It doesn't help that my family will be moving to another house later this month! This has become an utter NIGHTMARE!! And I just wanna wake up!

I guess Ludum Dare isn't for me, and saying that makes me so, so sad. I'm gonna go to bed, though I might respond via my phone, because I don't immediately go to sleep. If I still feel incredibly stressed after waking up, then I simply cannot continue on anymore. And I wanna clarify, I am NOT begging for sympathy! I do not feel that I normally deserve it; and yes, I really am feeling super distraught right now!

I hope, for the love of GOD, that you all are doing MUCH better than me!

Okay so I'm going to try and make a few levels in my game; if I have enough time, I'll try to polish the game right before the deadline

After finishing my Ludum Dare 49 submission: The Landscape Hates You, I was seriously distraught after the whole experience. I'm doing much better, but I still do get a slight existential crisis around nighttime. My game sucks, it sucks ASS! Well, at least I think so. But one thing I know for certain is that YOU all made much better entries than me, and the least I can do is go through them.

Now I made a similar post regarding the worst Ludum Dare in it's entire history: 41. Playing your submissions and of course, rating them! I remember I was going to make a video about my thoughts on them, but that never came to be. I can't guarantee I'll do that this time, because I won't.

Basically, what I'm saying is, I'll play through submissions, and if you feel like it, you can link your submission in the comments. Though I feel there would have to be SOMETHING special for you actually taking the time to link your post here, apart from a comment from me. Which isn't really special by any means

"yippee! this random internet person said something about my ludum dare submission, woohoo!"

Basically, I feel like I should be giving something in return, apart from my crappy entry. Maybe I'm just thinking too much about this.

And to save you the trouble, @peace-of-cake-games, I know I'll be playing through your entry. Also, I notice you've changed your profile picture!

And with that note, have a good day everyone.

My Ludum Dare #49 entry: The Landscape Hates You is so close to 20 ratings. You do not have to play it, but I'd certainly appreciate if you rated it!

And of course, be sure to check out the games in the Danger category! Have a good day, everybody!

There's less than 3 hours left, and I wanna make sure I get through as many Danger category games as possible before it's too late! So, if you see this post, and your entry is below 20 votes, send me a link!

Thank you very much, everyone who helped get my entry to 20 votes! I want to return the favor.

Believe it or not, my game didn't place top 15! :'(

But I don't really care about that! What I was more interested in was how this entry compared to my last. So here's the results of my previous Ludum Dare #40 entry: Shape Invasion

And here's the results from my entry for this Ludum Dare: The Landscape Hates You!

Overall ranked 113 places higher

Fun ranked 81 places higher

Innovation ranked 112 places higher

Theme ranked 207 places higher (highest high!)

Graphics ranked 201 places higher

Audio ranked 27 places lower

Humor ranked 147 places higher

And Mood ranked 129 places higher

Honestly, I was fully expecting my LD49 entry to rank lower than my previous entry; but I'm very glad that mostly isn't the case! I guess I'll now give my opinions on the improvements and deprovements:

FUN

I can see how Landscape does better than Shape Invasion in this category. There's actual LEVELS in this game, allowing for a more unique experience than Shape Invasion's repetitive boring gameplay. And also how there's better interaction between the player and obstacles in Landscape.

INNOVATION

Well it sure is more unique than Shape Invasion's barrage of shapes that you gotta destroy. I didn't know how to use GameMaker: Studio's Box2D physics system, so I had to come up with something non-physics related. After typing up a handful of ideas for roughly an hour, I decided to go with this:

It hurt my soul a bit just going back to the footage I had recorded. Those recordings hold some real bad memories. It's seriously unlikely if I WANNA make a timelapse out of the development!

If you've played my entry, you can tell that some of these ideas didn't make it to the final game. Elemental blocks suggests particle effects, something I'm not too familiar with in GameMaker, so I decided to can that idea. Tower blocks and Exploding blocks didn't make their way in because that would just be annoying; though at the time I only thought this about the Tower blocks, it's only with hindsight that a block randomly exploding and hurting/killing the player would just be cheap.

You know what? Since I'm talking about my godawful experience making this entry, I may as well include my journal(?) that I wrote during the jam. It was originally my ideas document, but then it just became a devlog sort of. I'll have a .txt file here, but if you want to (for some reason), I'll include the original LibreOffice document, for those who care about when it was made (like yours truly):

.txt file: (with added note that are not in the .odt file!)

.odt file:

Uh, make sure you have the zoom at 100%! Just in case things look weird!

Shape Invasion was just a bunch of objects piling up, and you gotta destroy them or else the game ends! Oh my!

THEME

Is it just me, or is Innovation and Theme kinda the same thing? Well, anyways, this was the biggest improvement upon my previous entry, and that makes a lot of sense. The Landscape Hates You! has levels filled with blocks that behave erratically, and it's NOT just a bunch of physics objects piling up, making the game LAG because I didn't give a care about game management!

As stated above, I pretty much couldn't use GameMaker: Studio's physics engine, so I had to come up with a compromise. Whereas Clickteam Fusion's physics system was just a matter of importing the Physics object, and assigning physics behaviors to the objects that are to be affected by physics. I haven't dedicated any real time to learning how to use GameMaker's physics, and honestly I don't want to; at least, not right NOW, because I have a seriously bad taste in my mouth from participating in this compo.

GRAPHICS

Yikes, I keep yapping on about my terrible experience with Ludum Dare #49, but it really CANNOT be understated how distraught I was. And graphics was where it reached it's absolute boiling point! I was legitimately CRYING from all the stress while animating the player character! I swear, even NOW, when I remark on this point of the development, god forbid, I still feel tears welling up. Though ironically, that isn't happening as I type this, but I DID feel a slight bit of tear-welling for a second.

In the roughly 4 years since a last participated in a Ludum Dare event, my artistic skills have gotten significantly better! And I certainly wanted to showcase that in my entry. In my return posts from before the jam started, I knew the first thing I should've done was to replace my profile picture.

This was my original picture:

Yeah, I couldn't draw at ALL back in 2017. But as my skills grew, and I returned to the site, I decided to replace that picture with a self-portrait:

I wish I could've made a drawing for the thumbnail of Landscape but I was rushing real hard to get this game out the door in time, and I'm not a big fan of the name I came up with in mere seconds before making the first of a couple builds before submitting. But I'm going a little off topic here; all I could show for my drawing skills is that I can do a MUCH better walking/running cycle than previously.

To compare, here's the walking animation in Shape Invasion:

And here's the running animation in The Landscape Hates You!:

I mean, even the Landscape animation is a little awkward, but there isn't any shrinking proportions unlike the Shape animation.

I also had the idea of giving the block types different sprites to indicate what they are; but I then decided that it would be better if the player didn't know what the block they step on will do ahead of time. I'm not sure how the game would've changed had I taken the time to include different sprites, but I know for certain that the block types would've looked something like this that I made for an unrelated project a few months back:

Just in case you're interested, it was gonna be a puzzle game where these blocks would have to interact to reach some goal. It didn't really go anywhere.

Good lord, this has been going on for so long, and there's THREE other categories! I should make the rest of this post a little shorter!

AUDIO

I absolutely DESPISE making music! Currently, I believe that a bad drawing is embarrassing for only a little bit; but a bad musical composition is torture for several times longer! Admittedly, I don't have very much experience with writing music, but I have a pretty hard time bringing myself to get past the starting phase of a track.

I think the music I made for Shape Invasion was absolutely horrific, yet it scored highest in the Audio category! Go figure. This time around, I simply didn't have time to make music; so my game could only have some sound effects. I elaborate on the 'boing' sound in the text files above, but the sound of Break blocks is just me going "KRKRKRKRCKRKKRCKKRKCKRKCRK" in the phone's microphone and editing it together in Audacity.

You know what? I'll add the full recordings in this post as well! So you can hear the sound effects that never were! There's extra boings!, a few jumps!, and me making weird demon noises as well! The second file is mostly me recording landing/footstep sounds that didn't make it into the final game, and that's were the 'jump' clips are. At the start of the 2nd recording, I even managed to make a perfect stapling sound with my mouth, unintentionally, of course! I didn't have much time to record these, only a few minutes really. So yeah, here's the recordings and sound files! I know you'll love this, @peace-of-cake-games!

There's just not that much going on in Landscape, so it makes complete sense that it would rank lower in this regard.

HUMOR

Well, Landscape does have those 'boing' sounds, and Shape has witty dialogue. Thinking about it, I can kinda see how Landscape wins in this regard. Shape only has some witty dialogue at the start, while Landscape has those sound effects all around the game. It's surprising that in both of these entries, it was the part that I thought was the worst/didn't put all that much effort into that ranked highest overall!

MOOD

It's shocking to see that LANDSCAPE managed to score higher! Probably the thing that I hate most about this entry is how BARREN it looks! I barely even got to show off my artistic ability! Though it's not like I'm a professional artist, absolutely not!

This one's a mystery to me.

OVERALL

In all, I'm glad to see that this game is an improvement in ratings; though it still was nowhere NEAR worth all the mental torture it took to get here! It really sucks, because I don't even really feel like doing anything regarding game development after this! I do feel like I'd be better off forgetting this even happened. I'm still very grateful the game managed to escape the Danger Zone and get a rating, I really am. Really, the worst thing about all this is that I made all those return posts, and now I just kinda feel like leaving AGAIN!!! I am now SO glad that Ludum Dare happens only twice a year!

In November, we are going to be moving to a new house; it's not far from where we already live, so it won't be too bad. But I still am feeling a bit stressed out about it. I mentioned earlier that I briefly felt tears come to my eyes, but right now I'm definitely feeling their presence.

Ever since I was young, I felt worried about missing out on something forever. It's a real curse of mine that's been lingering inside me for over a decade. And Ludum Dare 50 is most definitely something I DO NOT WANNA MISS!! I know I've already missed a lot as is; but just in general, I am terrified of what the future has in store, and that does not just regard Ludum Dare 50.

So, if you actually bothered reading this far in: first of all, I'm sorry this post is so long. I have a tendency of wanting to give as many details as possible regarding a topic, and I just wanted to really get this out here, as it's been a while since my last real post here.

Secondly, I have just one question to ask you all before ending this post:

What was your most miserable/painful time during a Ludum Dare event (that you'd rather forget)?

I'd really like to know; though I realize that this is kind of a touchy subject. Though I will NOT guarantee that I'll see them immediately, I really want to relax a bit and just leave this Ludum Dare behind. And as always, you do not have to answer the question! But I'd be interested nonetheless.

Anyways, thanks for reading this, and have a good night, everyone!

Even though I joined the event, I'm on the fence about Ludum Dare 50. To be honest, I'm feeling a bit worried about this event. It's such a major milestone for most anything to reach, thus I want to contribute; but on the other hand, the previous Ludum Dare was an actual. serious. NIGHTMARE for me, and the very last thing I need is to feel like that again.

Even though people hate repeating themes, I believe that, since it's the golden 20 year anniversary of this competition, we should go back to where it all began:

Indirect Interaction

I think it'd be the perfect way to celebrate Ludum Dare's legacy... even if I have no idea what game I'd make with that theme.

But I digress.

I've been on a hiatus from the site, and come back to see that the event starts in ONLY A WEEK!? Well, crap, I missed the Theme Suggestions, and now I've gotta slaughter them! I would HATE having to give up, on the 20 year anniversary, no less!

If I couldn't care about the theme this time, I don't see myself making a game. This event will most likely be the last time I participate, and that is a metaphorical stab in the heart to say. If this is what happens, I'll make my final(?) post here, and that will be a very sentimental post to write.

If, however, I DO decide to make a game, I'm going to participate in the Jam category, as I haven't done that before, and my last time participating was absolutely soul-crushing, so I'd rather have more breathing room.

Uh, I don't think I'd make a good team member; just putting that out there.

This time, I'll use GameMaker: Studio 2 as my engine of choice. It's funny, I've used a different engine each Ludum Dare I entered.

I'll use good ol' Audacity for any sound related stuff.

Honestly, I don't expect my game to have music, as I don't have really any experience. But if I do make music, I'll probably use Linux Multimedia Studio (LMMS) for making awful music.

And for graphics, I'm not entirely sure, but I'll most likely use the wonderful GIMP for a thumbnail image.

I'm not religious, but I hope to dear God that this doesn't end up being a LD49 repeat. Good luck to you all regardless!

Personally, I think I'd like to see 'A single resource' win. There could be a LOT of variation with such a theme; what resource you have, what you do WITH that resource, and what your ultimate goal involving that resource is.

Despite me saying this, I know I'll be grumpy in the beginning, if that theme wins. If a different one wins, well, hopefully it's not one of the bad ones ;)

I haven't watched the keynote yet, and I really want to! Unfortunately, I'll be 20 minutes late after finishing it! Ah, well, I still am gonna do it anyways. I really hope the theme isn't trash-garbage.

I had said that I wanted A single resource to win. Now, while that didn't win, I AM glad that this theme won; this was another preferred theme of mine. However, this is just the start of the jam, and I hope I can generate a good enough idea that I like so that I can make a game out of it!

Good luck to all, and apologies if your preferred theme didn't win.

Just remembered that I did NOT say that A single resource was the theme I wanted, although that was the available theme that I wanted. I had actually said that I wanted the very first Ludum Dare theme to be done again:

Indirect Interaction

Though, in all honesty, I prefer Delay the inevitable to that theme; so I should be happy what I said didn't happen! But yeah, have a good time everyone! Even if that means having to quit.