While at the same time studying for the exams :]

Hello! It’s my first time at LD, and I WON’T chicken out at the last moment like I did with the miniLD…

I’m just getting the feel of the posting system for now but my game engine is ready, keyboard cleaned of crumbs, screen polished to a shine and my damn DVD drive still not working.

Anyways, you got any tips for a LD beginner?

[EDIT] DAMN! My engine is still lacking sound and map loading, the keyboard still has crumbs in it and my screen has fingerprints all over it!! This is all going to hell! Well… at least the DVD drive is working…

[EDIT2] It’s  still not working!!

The crab and rice fought bravely but in the end I am the winner.

My webcam is horrible.

All the time up until now I had no Idea what to do, the theme was nothing I’ve tackled before, I even was gonna call it quits since nothing came to my mind, but people on IRC were supportive enough to convince me not to.
Still, 6 hours of work did nothing to me, only as I sad back and made a quick back for my game an Idea sparked.

I’m gonna make a game about just getting out there and having fun, enjoying the marvel of nature, and discovering far more than you’d want to.
An exploration side view platformer.

~Spliter

What this image shows is what I managed to do in 12 hours of work:

Absolutely nothing.
It’s two squares that don’t collide and you can control one of them though all it does is fall too fast for you to do anything.
I need to setup the collision system and I’ll be able to start making the game logic.
For the past 8 hours most of my time programming was absolved by pretentious bugs, which upon fixing revealed even more bugs. But at least I’ve fixed them all!

This has put me behind the time and most probably I won’t finish my game. Still I will submit my source code, because at least the engine part will be finished! And it’s a good one.
Still I hope I can at least make two or three levels for my game just to have something to show when someone asks me “so how did that 2 day game competition went?”.

Being a programmer with the attention span of a cat next to a yarn ball isn’t helping though.

…but now I have officially admit I have failed in making a game in 48 hours. The culprits are not planning ahead, rushing things, and distracting myself too often. In the beginning I set my expectations quite high as I usually do but I knew I wouldn’t be able to finish the game. Still, I was hoping to make 4 to 7 levels.
However when a one succeeds he learns little, where he fails he learns a lot, and I did.

This is what it could have been:

By not planning ahead I didn’t prepare my engine for loading levels from a file which was my pitfall. In the last 24 hours I rushed everything, making hacks and half-solutions that cost me a lot of time, hard work and stress. I also lost an incredible amount of time because I wanted to make my engine as modular as I could, so it would load maps, save the game, load the game etc. This is not possible without planning and sketching beforehand, and the first thing I should have done, which I didn’t was to get up from my computer, sit on my bed, grab a drawing sheet and plan everything there.
So although I have failed in creating a game I have learned a great lot from this competition, as for me I still feel like I’ve succeeded.

But be warned! Even though I dropped off now I will be back for the next competition, and when that time comes, I will be ready! And I shall Win!

~Spliter

Here are some of my graphics:

I wonder what the game will be about?
Ok, so I’m no good with themes like “greed” so I went for the alt theme. I’ll try to shovel in some greed there but I’m still trying to figure out how.
Oh, and I still haven’t thought of the game mechanics themselves despite already starting to write code (I would post a screen if it wasn’t a black screen with a tini fish in the middle of it).
so… yeah…

Ok, made a game in about 1 hour.
it’s about destroying GREED!
Every object has only one instance.
It’s the worst game you’ll play this miniLD I can guarantee that.

Release (windows):
http://www.benhem.com/catboxbeta/WorstGameEver.zip
Source (I think it’s possible to compile for other platforms, no tested though):
http://www.benhem.com/catboxbeta/WorstGameEverSource.zip

Yeah, my last blog post was pretty inconsequential and unrelated.
I might try to make another game.

Yeah, so after that shamefull release of the first game I wasn’t content, but more importantly it showed me I can still make small games like I used to make on GameMaker, that’s why I decided to give miniLD20 another go and do something that’s actually fun to play.
Here’s the first screen:

It might not look like much but i’ve spent the last 3 hours trying to make a little sperm looking fella with a wagling tail and failed miserably. Still I’m not one to give up so easilly so I added another tail and made it move like an octopus.
I’m still not sure how I’m gonna make a theme-related game out of that but I sure like swimming with this guy around.

I thought I should make this official:
I’m in.
Also I’ll finish the game. And then I’ll win every trophy and first place in all of the categories in voting. Then pigs will fly.

Wish me luck!

I’ve been with this community since 2009, so far I haven’t managed to submit any game despite participating in 3 compos so far.

I am here to make up for it. I have been preparing mentally and I’ve worked on several prototypes in the past. I am ready. I am in, and this time I won’t give up!

So!
After many, MANY LDs that I’ve witnessed but didn’t manage to participate (and one in which I spawned an abomination that will probably land me in the 6th circle of hell) I have finished my Magnum Opus:

Bunneh

The gameplay is simple:
Eat all the veggies, avoid the falcon.

And so without further ado, I bid you adieu, and give you my gameu:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=1301

You’re the little guy about to be brutally devoured by a falcon.

Tags: Bunny, Falcon, game, LD#26

Hello fellow Ludumdarians, both veterans and newbies alike!

Me and a workmate decided we’re gonna participate in Ludumdares and this is the second we’re participating together (apart).

My setup is simple:
Language: C++
IDE: Eclipse CDT
Engine: My own.

For my engine/base code I grabbed code from my libraries and threw it all in one spot that I’m sharing with the world here:
https://bitbucket.org/spliter/ludumdaregame/src

Yes, that is a 1.5 mb codebase (including .dll though) for a ludumdare game, and it contains a lot of code that will most likely be useless, but I didn’t really have had time to clean it up.

Either way: Have fun, and learn because that’s what LudumDare is all about!

I’ve been with the LD community for almost 10 years now, entered about 15 times and finished 2 games (and made one joke entry). My track record is further away from “good” than ISS is right now from me

There is a silver lining though: I have a lot of experience with failure and the last two times I’ve entered I managed to finish games I was happy with.

This is all to say that no matter if it’s your first time and you’re nervous about failure, or your 15th time and haven’t managed to finish a game yet, we’re all in this for fun and learning, and not finishing anything doesn’t mean you didn’t learn anything, and it doesn’t have to mean it wasn’t fun.

Here are a couple of things I’ve learned from my failures over the years and from actually finishing the games:

1. Eat healthy: Junk food and energy drinks might sound like the programmer’s food but in reality the healthier you eat on those days (as well as the preceding ones) the better you feel during the compo/jam, and feeling good is extremely important during such a strenuous activity.
2. Sleep enough: Also might seem contradictory to sleep a lot, but do not sacrifice sleep on the first two days as it counts to how you’ll feel during the compo. On the last day you can cut back on your sleep.
3. Clean yourself: Also very important and adds to the good feeling. I know that you’re probably not gonna meet other people during this period, but your body feels healthier when you’re clean and that is important during LudumDare.
4. Think small…. smaller…. smaller!.. Still too large! You have to think so small that quantum tunneling becomes a serious issue when developing your game! (oh wait, I’m thinking of electronics, but it still counts!) You’d be surprised how small you have to make your game to actually be able to make it, and if you’re making it in your own engine or an engine that you don’t use almost every single day then you have to think smaller yet!
5. Do not expect a theme: in fact, expect that the theme you will least like is gonna be chosen. This might sound pessimistic but after so many failures I’ve realized that imagining a game for a specific theme I liked would later on put me in a worse mood when a theme I didn’t fancy as much was announced.
6. Free your mind: Before the compo start: clean up your desk, your room, your house, do the laundry, wash the dishes, say goodbye to relatives and friends. Having a mind free of the daily responsibilities is very important, and having a clean workplace helps a lot.
7. Don’t spend too much time in social activities. I know it’s tempting and jumping onto the ludumdare IRC channel can give you an inspiration boost, but it’s very easy to lose a lot of time there, It also breaks your concentration and trains of thought.
8. When stuck, leave your pc and go for a walk: I have a personal theory: our brains have the consciousness and subconsciousness, and while it seems that it’s the consciousness is the one doing all the hard lifting, in reality it’s your subconscious that’s the real problem solver, and after it finishes processing it simply gives your conscious a solution in easily digestible chunks of info. When you’re stuck and start thinking of other stuff you stop feeding it new questions and so it has time to process your current problems. This is what, I think, the reason behind the common “after I left and came back all the solutions simply fall into place”.
9. Prepare your tools: You can use this weekend for preparation and making a small game. Being able to make a game mechanic and putting in some placeholder art is completely different from making an entire game. There’s a lot of things that you usually think take very little time but end up taking up almost entire day.  Practice making animations, make a game without any gameplay  but walking around. Even this simple concept grows greatly when you start adding the main menu, the credits, the internal level logic for starting and finishing the “game”, playing sounds on cue, playing the right music and fixing those small bugs in your game engine which might end up costing you many hours during ludum dare. <<<Prepare everything before>>>; This weekend, go, now, go!
10. Before you go: Remember why you joined this compo, it will help you keeping your eyes on the target. Now, have fun and I hope you learn lots!

All that said: i’m in!

My weapons of choice:

• Photoshop and Graphicsgale for art and animations
• My mouth, cutlery, bfxr and Audacity for sound.
• If I got time: Modplug tracker for music
• My own C++ game engine/libs to make the game (as well as some third party ones).

Hope to see you guys finish and have tons of fun

I’m gonna be busy this weekend since it’ the first time I’ve come to the US and my friends want to take me places, but there’s a chance I’ll have enough time to scramble something together for the jam.

My tools:

• My own C/C++ game engine: I made it specifically for this ludum dare to make it as easy as possible to twak the gameplay.
• Photoshop
• SFXR
• A piano for music recorded with laptop’s microphone (either that or Kevin MacLeod’s music)

Wish me luck!

I'm a professional game developer, and I've been with LudumDare for many years now, and yet only managed to create 2 games so far, so I hold tons of respect for all the people that come here and attempt to make a game.
However for me, this time will be different: I am better prepared than I was ever before, I've spent the last few weeks learning the tools, rescoped myself to aim for tiny games I can make in a couple of hours, and mentally prepared for victory, no matter the theme.

The tools I'll be using: * Unity for the game * Blender for modelling * Photoshop for textures and UI. * Modplug Tracker for music * Bfxr/Sfxr and Audacity for sounds

Wish me luck!

It has been a rough 48 hours, especially the last 8.
Even though I originally scoped the project pretty well, the issues with Blender and Unity made me lose many hours, add to that several more hours lost because I had no idea what to do about gameplay, and in the end I got myself a collectathon. Still, both visually and mechanically is the biggest game I've made during LudumDare so far, so I'm happy.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/metal-behemoth