First time participating in Ludum Dare! Excited to see what I'll learn and to share whatever I end up with at the end of the weekend.

I worked on my project for 4-5 hours last night before heading to bed. I finished the core designs, animations, and user input handling, which is a bit more than I was expecting to get done. They are VERY simple.

Here's a little teaser image: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3upCCoia9cSWEhWaWFMUUk4WGs/view?usp=sharing. As you may be able to piece together, I took the "Small World" theme in the direction of unexpected social interactions.

Today is the real test to see if the ideas I've been brainstorming turn into a game that's any fun to play. However it turns out, I've already learned a lot (first time rigging and animating with Unity!) and am enjoying seeing what everyone else is creating!

It's been a successful morning over here. The mechanics are starting to come together—if all goes well, it may even be fun by the end of the compo!

Because I just started learning Unity a month or so ago, I knew I wanted to try a few things that I hadn't done before: audio, animation, and particle effects. Two of those down already!

Here's a little preview:

I've been tweaking some of the exact scoring mechanics to try to create an engaging, replay-able experience. I'm pleased with where I am now, but I'll definitely have my work cut out for me tomorrow to get a decent level of polish. I still have a couple more essential features before I attack my wish list.

Here's a little teaser from a different part of the program. I look forward to sharing the rest of it tomorrow and am excited to see what everyone else has been working on! Good luck on the final stretch!

Hey friends!

I'll throw my game, The Time of our Lives, into the ring for all those who have a minute to play, rank, and (most importantly) leave feedback. It's my first Ludum Dare and I would love to get as much feedback as possible so I'm more prepared for the next one. I'm certainly happy to return the favor for anyone else wanting another set of eyes!

It's playable in-browser.

Thanks a million and enjoy!

-Tyler

If I learned one thing from LD38, my first game jam ever, it's that I should rapidly prototype and test that my game is actually, you know, fun. If I learned two things, the other is that I do best when I eat well. But I also don't want to spend a bunch of time cooking. Enter the crock pot.

Good, easy, and cheap food that I can have ready when I need it. That's why it's my early vote for my most important tool. That or Unity.

Best of luck to all the participants!

Well, I had a pretty great break earlier today that included boating, wakeboarding, and tubing.

Since then it's been back to work. I'm pretty happy with where I am after day 1. I've followed my goal of having a working prototype early on and was even able to test it on my phone with my friends on the boat. Armed with their feedback, I've made some adjustments and forged onwards. After one or two more level concepts I'll dive into the visual design before swinging back to see how I feel about the music I threw together earlier.

It's definitely time for me to start watching feature creep and cutting out things that I won't have done by the compo's end so I can have as polished a result as possible.

Best of luck everyone!

I'm planning on learning or practicing a new principle, technique, or feature in Unity every day until the jam starts. Some days I may only have 5 minutes to play around and others I may spend a few hours. The important thing for me is getting into Unity every day and messing around so I have a better grasp of the types of features available to me. Yesterday I played around with some simple shaders.

I followed these two video tutorials to write my own simple Toon Shader:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3Yg2i17TDo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0uJ4sZelio

The second link also helped me with full camera shaders, though those aren't present in my screenshot.

After that, I started to dive in to Shader Graph by building the displacement shader found in this tutorial: https://blogs.unity3d.com/2019/02/12/creating-an-interactive-vertex-effect-using-shader-graph/

The goal from this practice: give my game a stronger visual identity than the games I've made in past jams.

My game for LD53 was an improvised speech-giving game interrupted by Cue Cards that tell you words, actions and emotions, and literary devices to incorporate. I decided to do a bit of a devlog/post-mortem video that starts with me using the game to explain the game:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=91uTOmCMfeM

I hope you enjoy the game and the video!