So the engine is complete, I have the all the moves, collectables and general guff like enemies and pause screens all finished. All there is now to do is to make the worlds. As you can see I've started with the hub world already. Going to get this finished and then have a wee nap! Not bad progress for the end of day one, but so much is still needed to be done!

Hope everyone is having a lovely game jam so far! :D

It's done, I've had some rest as well so I thought I'd just upload one of those obligatory posts saying, PLAY THIS GAME coupled with a handful of animated gifs.

So basically what it is, is a 2D "collectathon" made in under 72 hours. It contains four worlds and one hub world. I wanted to see if it's possible to make one of these under the time limit and it turns out it is just possible.

I had to sadly cut a world out (it was either that or have zero music for the game.) I also didn't have time to add in a options menu, or cut-scenes that I originally had planned, but oh well, it's a LDjam game, it wouldn't be the same if things weren't cut or hurriedly finished.

Hopefully it plays well, sorry for the lack of polish here and there but I'm pretty proud of it :D

So here be the link to my LDjam page, check it out if you want! I'll start playing peeps games once the judging has started, (I fancy a couple of days rest.) I hope everyone had an amazing jam! :D

GameJam Page: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/$15876

-Joel

GAH I WAS AN IDIOT AND I FORGOT ABOUT THE JUDGING! I'm still a few votes away. I made this 2D collectathon for LDjam and I then forgot about the whole thing because I'm a giant idiot. I'm going to vote and play some games tonight before judging ends but if people could be a dear and give this ago I'll be super grateful! :D

So here be the link to my LDjam page, check it out if you want!

GameJam Page: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/$15876

I'm going to take a shower and then play some jam games before it's all over. Damn my really crappy memory!

-Joel

I'm in, are you?

9th Ldjam in a row now although I'm not excited as usual. I put this in the stupidly short amount of time since the last jam which is a shame usually I like getting all pre-hyped.

Oh well, still going to take part but most likely I wont be nearly killing myself due to overdosing on caffeine and lack of sleep. :)

Hope everyone has fun, that's the main important thing!

So I'm having quite a bit of fun with this jam, mainly because I'm taking it very chilled and just making the genre I love the most, Run-N-Gun :D

My current progress is going pretty smooth, got down the engine pretty much (just need to add little things here and there) and I'll be done. Done in time to start creating some mad bosses and stages.

Hope everyone is having a great jam so far :) -Joel

It's finally over, LDJam39 is finished and I managed to get some sleep! So comes the breakdown of how the jam went and for this LDjam I made:

You can go and visit the Ludum Dare page 'ere

Or you can watch a full playthrough below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aX3oHUIWc4w

Dawn of the First Day

I ACTUALLY SLEPT! I usually awake at around (2AM my time) for the announcement of the theme but this time because I'm currently unwell I just slept through until the morning! Anyway once I found out the theme I basically just got to work. I did a little brainstorming within me 'ead while making the morning coffee and I decided because I'm unwell I'd take it easy hence why I decided to construct a run-n-gun. My favourite genre within the video game world

Mr VoltGun, or as I like to call him, George

Now to keep it within the theme I decided to add some sort of timer that continuously keeps ticking down and when you defeat enemies it recharges it slightly. With this basic concept I started to draft up some sprites which actually pretty much became the final product. I somewhat wanted a hybrid human/robot with plug ears because I have a huge love for designs with them. It was around this point I had the engine complete which a handful of weapons, a wall jump mechanic and a dash boost. I added in the main character sprite and it was around here when the game started to take shape. It was now when I could start adding in the enemies.

The Doombots, I used to draw these lil' fellas way back in my university days almost ten years ago.

With my hype for Sonic Mania growing day by day I decided to inject some Sonic-y style and gameplay to this run-n-gun. Considering you're always on a ticking timer I felt the speed and cartoony approach a wise one although I would of loved of to added in a 360-platform engine in but alas I just didn't have the time to do so. It was around this point when I was adding in the Doombots to include the low-high weapon/dash settings. I wished I could of explored this concept a bit more but yet again, time wasn't on my side but at least it's still there. Anyway it was approaching the end of the first day and I needed my sleep (again I'm unwell currently >.<) I had the engine all finished the next day was to start creating levels :D

Dawn of the Second Day

The Evil Unnamed Villain in his flying Doom Machine.

Again I actually had a fair amount of sleep so I was ready to take on the task of creating and spriting up some levels. I originally had five levels planned, the fifth one being a short final boss stage. These stages were; Fort Sapling, Neopolis, Turbulence, Temper Gadget and Final Fever however in the end only three got made. I also wanted each level to have four scenes with two bosses with the second pair of scenes having a different variation in the looks, ala Sonic3&Knuckles but this too sadly had to be scrapped. Given if I was well enough and could power through with hardly any sleep I could of possibly achieved this but I wasn't up to the task.

Mmm lovely end of stage boss fights, delicious

Anyway it was this day where I completed the first two stages and got at least half of the third stage sprited/tiled out. I didn't have any bosses at this point because I was mainly concentrating on the stages themselves and finishing off extra engine detail, (like destructible blocks, springs all that lovely jazz.) Anyway around 3am I finally got to bed.

Dawn of the Final Day

So colourful, much bounce

Sadly the final day was the least productive of the bunch, I was really hoping to get the fourth stage Turbulence created but I just didn't have the time of strength to it. It took me much longer than I expected to finish the final stage off, mainly due to being unwell. I thought also it wouldn't take me too long to finish off the end bosses but again I mis-judged and then they took about a couple extra hours longer. All this gave me only about a 45 minutes to compose all the music. I really wanted to add in some cutscenes and menu gubbings but I just ran out of time. I'm actually surprised looking back I've created what I did considering my health and the time I wasted sleeping.

Feeling hot hot hot.

Not to worry because I had an extremely fun jam, things somewhat came together and I had an amazing time creating this game. I hope people enjoy playing it! I'm going to take a couple of days rest and then get cracking on playing some lovely jammy games! Hope everyone had a fun jam!

-Joel

You can go and visit the Ludum Dare page 'ere

I'd thought I'd just do another plug of me jam game before the weekend where I intend to play-through everyone's games that were kind enough to play/rate/comment on mine. And other games too. My game is called Running VoltGun and at its core a 16-bit run-n-gun explodathon, showing my love for Treasure's Mega Drive outings.

You can go and visit the Ludum Dare page 'ere

Or you can watch a full playthrough below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aX3oHUIWc4w

Anyway I'll be getting around to playing other peeps games this weekend (when I have much more free time.) Anyway hope everyone be having a great time playing and rating games, plus having a well deserved post jam rest!

-Joel

Worst results I've ever got since starting Ldjam a few years back. Honestly, feels like a got a handful of spite/1-star votes for zero reasons, I even got people downvoting my playthrough videos so I know it's prolly happening.

With that I'm done, no more. It feels like Ludum Dare itself is beginning to go down hill. Now before I get the inevitable "stop moaning" or general shitposts I'm not saying, I should of won, or hey I should be top 10, but these results are way off compared to my usual track record. For example, I submitted a game last year that was really unfinished (with no music, missing levels) that did better than this.

Bye.

Assetflip/Shovelware Simulator 2000 is go.

Totally not take this jam seriously.

I thought I would do my usual post jam breakdown for Burning Ravager my entry to LDJAM49.

Dawn of the First Day

So having not done a LDjam in over four years I told myself to take it easy and actually sleep... Did I do that? Of course I didn't. Anyway, the theme comes in and for once I didn't overly mind it, wasn't fantastic but it wasn't totally awful. Originally and for the first couple of hours I was prototyping an RPG system as I fancied doing something different, however after two hours of this I just knew I wouldn't get it completed in time so I scrapped that and went straight to something I'm familiar with. Old 8bit NES styled shooters.

For about two days this is what I was staring at.

I needed to get a basic concept down, so I decided on the same gameplay I had for my RPG, the more spells/magic you had the more unstable your character/player got and could randomly explode. I took that and made it so the more equipment you had attached to your character, the more it's "core" temperature would raise and if it's too hot it would become unstable and you'll explode eventually.

So the first day (first 18 hours) I basically did the barebones of a platformer engine, collision, enemy stuff, camera, items, weapons, menus and so forth. I decided to skip out on stuff like ladders, slopes and (reluctantly) bosses due to time. I just knew if I added those in, I would just run out of that sweet precious time. I also was toying to add controller support but sadly again, that would of took up time which I'd rather spend polishing and bug hunting. I had it in mind that the game would be about going around "worlds" and collecting the planet's gem and escaping before the planet's core becomes unstable. With the money you collected and banked, you could buy extra weapons/equipment/cooling tanks to make the later levels more easier. However in day three this "worlds" idea turned into one big planet.

But anyway that was my first day. I tucked myself into bed, went to sleep to prepare for Day 2.

Dawn of the Second Day

So the second day started at 3am at night. Sleeping is wasted time, so I got up and made the first of what was to be several coffees. In my half awake state I decided to sprite out the main character and an area so at least I wouldn't be staring at blue and yellow blocks all day.

I very quickly sprited this lil' mech in about twenty or so minutes. This is the beauty of 8bit or low-bit games, the art assets take very little time. This is the main reason I decided to go 8bit Nintendo to really ease on the work load. After this lil' mech was created I started creating all six weapons and all twelve enemies in the game. At this current time all I had was a basic block shooter and one static enemy. This took a few hours to do, actually took a lot longer than I was expecting. When I started to get bored I opened up my music software and created a track for the game. (This takes about about half an hour per track. I didn't go true NES style because Famitracker would of took far far too long, cheap 8bit synths to the rescue!)

After about what I would say another 8-12 hours I had all the enemies completed, a couple of music tracks and the tileset for the first area all completed!

Yes the boulder is actually classed as a enemy

I really wanted to do a boss and a handful more enemies but I just knew if I did that I wouldn't be able to add the polish I desire in these games. I had to just face facts and scrap it.

About now I decided to do all the menus, because usually I leave this to last and really skimp on it. I made it a mission to really polish up the menus, and with the fact you buy things from shops it was necessary to make it pretty decent. I always find this really really boring so I made sure I was armed with potcasts and coffee. Lots of coffee!

Now it was approaching the third day but did I sleep, the answer is no.

Dawn of the Final Day

It was now, where I actually designed the whole world map and all the three "areas" you see. The original plan was that there was several areas you'd warp down too, each with its own gem. However when I was designing the first "map/world" I just knew this would of taken way, way too long so I condensed it all into one big world. There was a few oversights with this, as I had designed some areas to be re-visited with an item, which now in my new concept made some areas just a pain to navigate. I didn't pick up on this until it was too late, so my apologies if some places are an pain the ass to get through.

Anyway, basically the next day (20 or so hours) I just spent making the whole area, which included three more tiles sets, bug hunting, gimmicks (lava heating up mech, rain, conveyor belts, lasers, unstable rock floors, six gems, spikey spikes,) exit portals, the lot. This was prolly the most fun I had during the jam, even if I was very tired and lagging a lot. When I started to lag too much I would, again, open up my music software and churn out the remaining tracks needed.

Hours went by and a few times I didn't think I would make the deadline but I carried on, hitting a couple of brick walls of fatigue along the way but by 8pm (UK time) I had it basically finished. All was missing was a title screen, some ending screen and general tidying up here and there. At this point I decided to take a nap but for some reason I just couldn't fall asleep, as usual.

So I just got back up, finished off a quick title screen, some really naff and cheeky credits, polished a couple of menus up (forgot to add a volume adjust, which I've now plopped in an updated version,) posted to itch.io and here.

It was done. I replied to my twitter comments and went to bed.

I've not missed the stress I put myself through but I have very much missed that moment when you looked what you've made in under 72 hours. And then the joy to play and rate other's games!

But for now it's rest time for a couple of days and then it's off to rate and play some games!

-Joel

Play/Rate Burning Ravager here on LDjam: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/unstable-wip

Well that was very unexpected if I'm going to be honest. There was so many fantastic games out there that any one of them could of deserved that spot and I would of been equally happy.

Honestly though the best thing about coming back to the jam was the sheer amount of fun (and a smattering of stress) I had creating this little game. I forgot how it was like to not sleep, consume your body weight in coffee and have a meltdown when your program crashes and you lose about a hour of work.

I posted up post jam breakdown as I often used to do on the old site, you can read it 'ere:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/unstable-wip/burning-ravager-post-jam-breakdown-1

If anyone fancies to have a blast through me little game then 'ere is the link: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/unstable-wip

<3

As per tradition, better post that I'm taking part in the jam and most likely will consume my body weight in coffee yet again. :)

As usual I'd thought I'd do my quick post jam break down of my game for LDjam 53.

Dawn of the First Day

As tradition, I didn't quite like the theme Delivery, so the beginning of the jam I kind of took it slow. I wasn't really feeling it and I honestly thought I would drop out after working somewhat slower and lacklustre than I usually do.

Saying that, I did straight away prototype a "Crazy Taxi" kind of game where you pick up and drop off passengers around a world. The original concept was 3 smaller worlds where you would fight through enemies, earn cash and upgrade your character. You'd unlock a new level once you hit a certain credit amount or drops.

So the first day really consisted of designing the gameplay, making weapons, creating a few enemies and just getting the main base down. However due to my somewhat laziness on this first day, this ended up spilling over into day 2.

Dawn of the Second Day

So the second day was upon me, after getting quite a bit of sleep (10 hours, which is unusual for me during a LDjam) I set down to finish the main base of the game. During this period I set to designing the passengers, level graphics, area gimmicks and some of the music for the game.

( The areas/biomes of the world, Forest, Aquatic, Magma, Temple and Factory.)

It was at this point where my decision of actually sleeping and taking it a little more relax came to bite me in the backside. I knew at this point I wouldn't be able to make three different levels with a decent size, so I began cramming it all into one massive level. The knock on effect this had is that a lot of the code was based on smaller size stages, so the direction arrow became a bit wonky at finding the best path :/ Sadly at this point it was too late to really edit it and fix it. I also thought I would have enough time to add a couple of a bosses that would allow a "warp" point between both ends of the world, but again due to lack of time I had to scrap this idea, even though I add most of the code to make this work!

In hindsight I should of shrank the world down and knocked off an area. This would of given me a little more time for extra polish, stopped the player from getting a little more lost than I intended and also given me more time to add in music tracks for each of the areas.

Dawn of the Final Day This time I hardly slept, this was because I had the huge task of actually plotting out the world and making sure it all worked. For the next 20 hours I was building the main world, editing the menus, adding in a shop and doing the main bulk of the world.

It was at this point I knew why in the past I never really sleep during game jams! Although in my older age I know that my body can't quite take that sort of punishment anymore! (I'm still feeling it now!) I honestly thought I wouldn't get it finished but luckily I finished it in the nick of time, even though I had to cut out a few things and I didn't get the polish that I usually do. I had to for-go unique tracks for each of the areas and a snazzy intro art.

But it's done. I'm not super happy with this one but still, it's better than I used to do back when I first started.

Next time I'll try and give it a little more, but damn I'm getting to old for that haha.

Play Hazard Saviour here: Itch io Page: https://sinclairstrange.itch.io/hazard-saviour

LDjam page: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/53/hazard-suviour

(I was that tired at the end I spelt the name wrong on my LDjam, oh well!)

Watch a full playthrough here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wMECSq2Wtk

Anyway I hope peeps had a fun jam, looking forward to this weekend where I can play lots of games and see the wicked cool stuff peeps made!

(A full map of the world is here:) Full Map

As per usual with the laws of Ludum Dare, 'ere is a post about playing games!

Last week we all decided to be crazy and make a game under 48/72 hours, and mine being Hazard Saviour. A silly question of what if you took a Metroidvania and blended it with Crazy Taxi? If ye fancy playing that experiment you find here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/53/hazard-suviour

(I also did a post jam breakdown post which ye can read here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/53/hazard-suviour/hazard-saviour-post-jam-breakdown

I'm going to be blasting through and playing as many awesome games this weekend and Monday and giving them a rating and a comment, (the most fun part of LDjam for sure!) So feel free if you want to play and rate me game, I'll be sure to also come and play yours too in good true Ludum Dare fashion!

Hope everyone has recovered from the hectic nature of last week <3 Take care all, and remember to stay hydrated!

As usual, I completely forgot about LDjam until the last moment so it's the mad panic to rate and review games! It's totally my fault if I don't end up with a result (although to me, the fun of LDjam is making the games and then playing them.)

So feel free to play me little rogue-like-lite called Tiny Temples and I'll be sure to review and play back before our dreaded timer ends. (I'm sure we used to get more weeks to play/review games.)

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/tiny-temple

It's a short little rogue-like-lite where you adventure through multiple different rooms, blasting enemies and trying to rescue your cat! Just something silly that takes place on a 256x144 limited space screen.

Feel free to review and leave a comment. I'm now off to hopefully play some games before the time runs out! Haha, nothing like a tight deadline for LDjam!

As usual I’d thought I’d do my quick post jam break down of my game for LDjam 57.

Dawn of the First Day

I can't believe it but I didn't mind the theme for once! What is this?! Anyway I decided to go down my usual route of, guns, shops, collecting things and blasting up enemies. The first day went down doing the usually making a basic engine, with the general gameplay, a single enemy and all the gubbings I need to make it into something fully fleshed out.

I decided I didn't want to do anything with going into the depths, but instead of escaping them. I found there might be quite a few games about exploring them, mining or travelling down them so I thought I'd be cooler to do the opposite. Originally I planned it being an auto-scroller going up but I settled on the camera just panning up once you land on a solid ground. I had to figure out a quick and dirty way of respawning if you touched the bottom, which ended up turning out fine, (I hope.) The original plan was to make it a semi-rogue like with randomized levels, (you'd play five randomized levels from a seed of 10, however after the second day I knew I wouldn't have enough time to make 30 levels, so this concept was dropped.

Once the main core engine was finished I decided to add in all the weapons, upgrades and enemies. This took a few hours so I didn't go super overboard with them. I also didn't bother to sprite new looking guns for all the weapon types, that saved a few minutes too. Along with this, I kept the graphics simple and basic so they too wouldn't take an age to make. I decided to use the Master System palette because that console gets overlooked sometimes!

Anyway once all that was done I was finished for the first day and ended to bed!

Dawn of the Second Day

I woke up after about five hours of good decent sleep, refreshed I decided to make a pot of coffee and get back to it. I started working on the graphics for the levels. I had planned three distinct levels and I wanted to keep to this goal. This was the next couple of hours designing the tilesets, so they were ready to be used for when I get around to making the actual levels.

Once this was done, I started to make all the menu screens, pause screens, the shop, intro/outros. Basically anything that text/menus I decided to work on that because I can't stand doing this. It's better for me to do this when I'm awake and refreshed than when I'm super tired. After about a good four or so hours I had all this done! Although I say I hate making them, I did highly enjoy making my silly little intro for the game.

And with that, I had about a few hours left of the second day and just got down to crunching out levels. It was at this point I could see myself not making 30 different levels for my rogue like, so it ended up just making as much as I can and go with it. With that at the end of the second day I had the first stage fully completed with eight different stages and I went to bed.

Dawn of the Final Day

After about another five or six hours sleep, I awoke to what was the most easiest day of them all really. Nothing cool or interesting other than making levels. That was it. Just sat down and made levels and tested them. For the first time in my LDjam history I was ahead of schedule! With this by about 4 hours left I had made 22 levels and thought best to call it quits there and focus on two other important things, music and something extra to end the game on.

So with that, I spent about two to three hours making all the audio tracks for the game and about an hour on just a little extra for the end. (A small boss, nothing special just something other than "you escaped the final level".) I should of spent a little more time on the boss because it was a little underbaked, upped his health a little bit or did something but as a quick little add-on I can't complain.

And with that, I was done, finished with about 30 minutes to spare! I uploaded the game, recorded a video and it's done! Honestly this was such a lovely peaceful jam for me, I didn't panic, I didn't burn out and I just sat and had three days of fun making a silly little game that took inspiration from Cave Story, Momodora and Castle Hydra. That was my vibe with this game, and I just honestly enjoyed every second of it.

Fifteen coffees, two bars of chocolate, one bottle of store brand cola and a tube of pringles later and I made a game.

I've finally getting around to making this post and also playing all the wonderful games I've seen through this jam, it's great to be back after such an awful year!

Anyway I hope you enjoy Abyss Vaulter: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/abyss-vaulter

And if you can't play it, 'ere is a full playthrough of the game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GClSKA7fJ68

Much love - Joel!