I thereby declare my codebase…
In other words, a ludicrously named GameMaker framework-in-progress of mine.
With that, now I can sleep peacefully to find out tomorrow that the theme is, indeed, Connected Worlds. If it’s not, things will get pretty fun. ^^”
Goodnight~!
Phew, I sure have been busy during all that competition; now to play through some games with high coolness-to-ratings ratio….
Also, if someone is interesting how my star ratings map to the game, here is a reference:
1 star – poor/annoying (an element that spoils an otherwise nice game)
2 star – decent (nothing great, but serves its purpose well enough)
3 star – likeable
4 star – remarkable
5 star – excellent
That means that if you get 2-stars in some category, it doesn’t mean I consider it below average; I just prefer to leave more degrees for things I actually liked.
And in relation to themes:
1 star – not really following the theme
2 star – forced (expect in such games naming the theme directly so that people notice it at all)
3 star – background (it’s there and works, but the game wouldn’t lose much without it)
4 star – integrated (the use of theme affects the gameplay/experience significantly)
5 star – inseparable (the game breathes the theme; taking it away would pretty much destroy the game)
Hopefully I’ll get more time to play tomorrow…
Alright, after playing a little I got a few questions/dilemmas regarding games scoring.
1. If I use n/a, does it mean that this aspect isn’t rated, rather than is treated as worse than 1 star? It’s particularly important in regard to the games that don’t work; it says not to score unrunnable entries, but I’m not sure if leaving everything as n/a and using the rating comment box does count as “scoring” (since it seems using the comment box just below ratings increased my coolness). ^^” It’s particularly relevant in cases of ratings that might not quite apply, especially “Humour” one (how one does rate a “humour” game if the game apparently isn’t meant to be humorous at all?).
2. If “rating” an unrunnable entry with all n/a’s doesn’t affect its ratings too negatively, is it fair to “rate” it and get coolness rating for that? On one hand, it seems like a “cheap” way to get this, on the other it’s not one’s fault if the program doesn’t run, and they *did* take an effort to get the game and play it; it’s just that they couldn’t play in the end.
3. How to rate “Audio” if the game has no sounds? Contrary to game-dependent Humour, Audio in most cases *improves* the game. Therefore, I’d rather use 1 star instead of a neutral n/a (if it indeed is neutral); otherwise the developer that took an effort (and much needed time) and made some decent, but not outstanding sounds, could be “punished” by getting below-average rating instead of unaffecting n/a.
Hopefully someone more experienced in LD voting can provide some insight here; I guess it might be a matter of personal practices, but still it’s good to know other’s thoughts on that. ^^”
Alright, having played some other games a little, I think I can write that thing somewhat menacingly called “post mortem”. For the reference, the game I made was Collision. The tools I used were GameMaker: Studio for general engine (along with earlier declared PARADIGMOSIS framework in progress thing), OpenMPT for soundtrack and Audacity for OGG conversion, SFXR for sound effects (I admit, it really *is* an awesome tool, especially in such short jams). It was for the 48 hours competition, but in the end I feel it ended up better than my earlier games for other 72-hours competitions.
What went right:
What went wrong:
What I’ve learned:
Overall, it was quite fun participating in that compo, though I guess the next time I’ll prefer to participate in the Jam instead; I’m not overly fond of sharing my entire general codebase with everyone else, and 72 hours is still longer than 48. Plus, I don’t like coding the same functionality over and over again. ^^”
I’m curious about what the results will be… I guess I’ll need to wait quite a bit. Still, I probably will do some additional voting every now and then…
(on a side note, whoever came up with the coolness rating and it affecting the order of suggested games to play was a genius; it really seems to work!)
I guess that’s it. Need to work in fixing my sleeping patterns… probably won’t touch the development itself for a little while… ^^”
Since people seem to post fancy statistics recently, I decided to make some of my own, too. However, I don’t really have an easy access to LD data nor a friendly bot to retrieve these for me, so instead I came back to some idea I had some time ago, but eventually forgot.
So here it is: a complete list of all themes proposed across 4 rounds, with the themes from final round being italicised. Maybe someone will find it interesting. Of course, I wouldn’t mind if you decided to play the game in question first. 😉
Planned and executed (4/81; 2/20):
(themes that I wanted to allude to in one way or another, and succeeded in doing so)
Spotted and executed (11/81; 4/20):
(i.e. themes that I was aware would be present in my game, but didn’t really tried to include)
Planned, but not included (11/81; 4/20):
(i.e. uses of themes that I wanted to allude to, but eventually didn’t have time)
Unintended, but somehow included (5/81; 0/20):
Ignored and not included (50/81; 10/20):
(hmm, I really could use some spoiler tag here…)
To sum it up in fancy images, because we all know everyone likes fancy images:
I wonder, how about others’ theme coverage; in particular, what sort of other themes appeared the most in LD games in one way or another (Another World, perhaps?), and whether every theme has related game (I know for sure “This Happens To Me Every Day” has at least one). Perhaps we should play some sort of Ludum Dare theme bingo? ^^”
So, following the thought from my previous post, I decided to make a list showing which themes are being covered by which games. That list is by no means complete, and is likely to be updated in the next posts (possibly sent every one-two days, depending on how much I get to find at later point). I’d really like you people to help with spotting the themes as well, especially since I’ve played only about 5-6% of all LD games out there. >.<
It's worth noting that themes that have strong coverage found are bolded, while themes with weak or no coverage found aren’t (no coverage can be recognised by lack of linked games). I decide whether coverage is weak or strong arbitrarily, but there’s some measure decisive in most cases: if theme usage needs explanation, it means that it’s probably weak. Also, if there’s at least one game with strong coverage found, the ones with weak coverage won’t be linked. Additionally, if there are many games that cover the given theme strongly, only the most noteworthy will be picked.
Additionally, themes that made it to the final round of voting are italicised. Just because.
Also, I don’t include my game in the list, since I want to be a good girl and do my best to break the habit of shamelessly linking it.
Enjoy~!
(I decided not to give names explicitly, in case someone could find that too spoiler-ish; I guess there should be no major spoilers, even in You Are Already Dead, but…)
Coverage found so far: 17 strong, 2 weak, 62 missing.
Can you spot the games using the missing themes? :3
After you have read my plea, have a pie:
Note that large part of theme coverage comes from Boulevard of Broken Themes entry, which is why it has separate positions in the pie-chart. Note that “non-Boulevard” here means “is covered by something else than Boulevard”, not necessarily “isn’t covered by Boulevard”. Also, some special links were added, marked as [B]. Obviously, it stands for “basement” and has no relation to the game mentioned earlier in that paragraph.
Themes that have strong coverage found are bolded, while themes with weak or no coverage found aren’t (no coverage can be recognised by lack of linked games). I decide whether coverage is weak or strong arbitrarily, but there’s some measure decisive in most cases: if theme usage needs explanation, it means that it’s probably weak. Also, if there’s at least one game with strong coverage found, the ones with weak coverage won’t be linked (unless it’s one of weirder theme usages in Boulevard). Additionally, if there are many games that cover the given theme strongly, only the most noteworthy will be picked.
Additionally, themes that made it to the final round of voting are italicised. Just because.
Enjoy~!
(and beware of random links; they’re very random)
Can you spot the games using the missing themes? :3
After you have read my plea, have a pie:
Note that large part of theme coverage comes from Boulevard of Broken Themes entry, which is why it has separate positions in the pie-chart. Note that “non-Boulevard” here means “is covered by something else than Boulevard”, not necessarily “isn’t covered by Boulevard”. Also, some special links were added, marked as [B]. Obviously, it stands for “basement” and has no relation to the game mentioned earlier in that paragraph.
Themes that have strong coverage found are bolded, while themes with weak or no coverage found aren’t (no coverage can be recognised by lack of linked games). I decide whether coverage is weak or strong arbitrarily, but there’s some measure decisive in most cases: if theme usage needs explanation, it means that it’s probably weak. Also, if there’s at least one game with strong coverage found, the ones with weak coverage won’t be linked (unless it’s one of weirder theme usages in Boulevard). Additionally, if there are many games that cover the given theme strongly, only the most noteworthy will be picked.
Additionally, themes that made it to the final round of voting are italicised. Just because.
Enjoy~!
(and beware of random links; they’re very random)
Some of the themes found recently were actually quite ; perhaps if I had enough to play all 2500+ entries, I’d indeed find game for every single theme out there? ^^”
But I’m just a single person. If you spotted non-Boulevard coverage of any theme beside, please do mention it (best with a link). I’d like to catch as many as possible.
So you think one theme just isn’t enough, huh?
Well then, how about a nice game of Theme Bingo?
The rules are simple: when making your game for Ludum Dare, you not only execute whatever theme wins in the final round; you also somehow include the other themes from the card presented above, so that themes used overall form a row, column or diagonal from the big, 9-fields wide square. The side themes don’t need to be followed strongly; as long as they’re alluded to somewhere (and aren’t all listed in one place without any relevance to the game), it counts. If you aren’t feeling *that* confident, you might want to use only the green, 5-fields wide square instead.
(if you plan to play the theme bingo, please let me know; I’ll prioritise your game when playing)
It can also work the other (and likely easier) way – when playing other games, you can try to spot alternate themes usages and check if they collectively form a row, column or diagonal (or a few of these).
Let the randomness commence~!
Sadly, it seems I won’t be participating this time around. I got kinda overwhelmed by the LD game and, more importantly, I’ve found myself longing to do other project of mine instead; and if I were to choose between doing another project or procrastinating while trying to make LD game, I’d rather pick the former. It’s not even “I feel like my game won’t be good enough”, I wouldn’t drop out for such a silly reason. Rather, I feel like I can’t bring myself to work on that project anymore; not today, at least.
I feel particularly bad about my partner who was doing the art; I hope he won’t be too disappointed. Pretty much the only gameplay-workable thing I managed to make was dragging items between shop display shelves and storage slots, as in the screen below:
(the slots background was made by me; other graphics were made by the artist)
Still, I do plan to stay cool (not too hard during winter, huh?) even if I won’t have a game to attract the attention to. After all, I’ve got player’s theme bingo to play~!
So, I participated in the recent Ludum Dare, took 3 days to work on the Jam game, so of course the next logical step would be to start playing other games, maybe further tinkering with own entry, that sort of thing?
Well, yes, that would be the next logical step. But Christmas-preparation-madness had other plans. Ironic, considering how that holiday time is supposed to be about rest, but not entirely unexpected. ^^”
Nonetheless, I’ve managed to shell out a few hours to spend on further development, even if I’ve still got a long way to go. Behold, a prettily formatted and scrolled text!
If you’d like to play around with the current version, it can be found here (the recent changes can be found under “Post-Jam” category, of course). I won’t blame you if you won’t; it’s still very unfinished.
Now then, today or at latest tomorrow I should finally start gathering some coolness. I’d love to do that earlier, but it’s so hard to find the time recently… ^^”
Well, more precisely, with a half-hearted attempt at it. It seems I’ve opened quite a can of worms when starting all that tutorial stuff. I’m afraid it’s necessary, though, since many people seemed rather confused by the gameplay. Dunno if, with the way I’ve set it up, there will be some improvement, or perhaps even more confusion? Won’t know without trying, anyway.
Also, I hope people won’t just skip through the dialogue…
You can check the game here. If you do so, please rate the Jam version, but comment on the post-Jam version. The feedback on the Jam version might very well be outdated, and maybe even downright confusing. If you comment, please say if it’s for the Jam version or the post-Jam version! That way I’ll be able to tell if some parts mentioned in feedback have been addressed already (especially helpful if a piece of feedback could technically work in both versions). Thank you. ^^
