I already have an idea and it should be easy to implement, but I think I can pull it out in 48 hours.

I am so rusty with Unity that I actually took forever trying to remember how to make buttons work. Fortunately I stopped being an idiot and got it together so now I have a clicker game where you can actually click. Also my game is a clicker game about ritual sacrifice so yea. Hopefully I can pick up the pace and not have to relearn all of my seemingly dorment Unity knowledge. Its late now my time so I think this is a good point to call it for the night. In the morning I will start work of making more things to click and hopefully ways to upgrade your clicking potential. I think the last thing I am gonna work on are graphics after all the main point of a clicker is to well... click so if its not engaging to just click squares I dought my lack luster art skills will make it any better.

Here's a video of my "gameplay" so far:

https://youtu.be/xrnH4-5sre4

My cult based clicker is fast taking on its final form gameplay wise. Which isnt really that impressive because it is a clicker after all. I got names for all my upgrades (more than one of which popped into my head when I was trying to get some much needed shut eye). I feel invigorated and rip roaring & ready to get down to even more work.

Here have another progression video showing off the ability to upgrade clicks and the amazing feat of having animated buttons.

https://youtu.be/LfI5tX_fEL8

I was stuck with family for pretty much eight hours today, and will be with them again for a long time tommorrow so I am hoping to really buckle down and get the game finished tonight (anything is possible with hard work and spagehtti code. While I was trapped away from my keyboard I did manage to do some work on my graphics so now everything doesnt look like the most generic unity clicker ever. I'm close to my finish line now just need a few more bits and bobs then I will have most of the next 19 hours to polish up the rough edges.

Here is a progress image and a video to see my sweet graphics in motion.

https://youtu.be/7RqJoKQi5CU

I would say that Cultist Clicker is 100% feature complete at this point. I realised that I could add a few lines to hide the next upgrade untill you have 50% of its value in pints of blood. I'm hoping that the mystery of wonder what the next item is will make people want to click more. I think the best thing I have added so far is my custom mouse cursor which is just a pixel art butchers knife. I felt like it really helps sell the point of sacraficing people more than a generic mouse cursor. The next thing on my list to add is a nice juicy sound for when you click on the sacrafice. Hopefully it gives a nice feel to the repetative clicking. Also I need to see about finding a better font and a nicer color for my text the black on white looks fine, but I feel like the orange on red on orange makes it difficult to read your score at a glance.

Here are a picture and a video of my new hidden upgrades system.

https://youtu.be/9VZQjjzmbmY

I'm really tired, but I finished Cultist Clicker. Let me just say my god was that fun. I will defenatly have to join the next Ludum Dare again. Now I am gonna go and sleep the next 12 hours 42 minutes away untill the compo ends. Goodluck everybody that still hasn't finished hope to see everybody at the finish line.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/cultist-clicker

I really enjoyed the last jam so I expect to be at it again in come LD44. I will probably be using the same stuff I used last time AKA Audacity, Blender, Paint dot Net, and Unity. I also hope I can end LD44 with a better rank than I had last time.

Also here are my theme suggestions I put in. I tried to go with things that would be very open to interpretation.

Finally all the themes have been slaughtered. I find it funny how themes seem to get split into three camps. Themes that are gameplay like "Only three buttons to control the game". Themes that are more in the style of literary themes like "ruin" or "unhappyness", and finally joke themes. I am not a huge fan of literary themes so I mostly voted no on those and yes on some more gameplay styled one. Although with some of them I just couldn't resist.

Finsihed my voting for round one of themes. Out of all the current theme's there are only like four that I think I really could do something cool with. I've already figured out what type of game I want to make so I'm probably gonna spend this week roughing out some design documents for diffrent themes so I can figure out what I am aiming for before the start of the Compo. I'm also gonna look back on the comments I got for my LD43 game and see what positives egatives I can take away from there and try to find what my weak points are so I can make a really fun game this time.

Also the theme of Old Technology and all the post with wallpapers make me want to give making one a try so here is my (poor) attempt at those 1970s brown stripes that you see on old Winnebagos.

I even went ahead and gave it an old resolution. Admittedly I did go for 3:2 rather than 4:3 but I mean what is old tech if not weird and non-standardized. Also I'm sure you can tell but I'm about as much a graphic designer as a child with a box of crayons so for any actual professonals I wan't to apologize for my bastardization of your craft.

I joke, I kid. Your not bad (well you might be but I don't know you well enough to judge so I'm just gonna say your not.) Much has been said about how terrible the themes are and I agree with that sentament but ladys and gentlemen I come barring what I consider a solution. Did you know that in 2014 Ralph Koster gave a GDC talk all about practical creativity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyVTxGpEO30

I'm not saying this is the miracle drug you all will need to make a bad theme win first place, but I mean it can't hurt when there is a chance we will get the theme "Non-traditional Boss Battles". Now because I am a big believer that claims need evidence I am gonna use some practical creativity and list off Sixteen diffrent game idea's all in the genre of Twin-Stick Shooter (which I don't plan on making one at any point as they don't interest me at all) using the themes from Round 3 of voting to show that even with bad themes all you need is a little creativity to make it work.

• Ridiculosly Overpowered: Enemys are impervious to direct fire (talk about being overpowered) you instead must bounce your bullets off walls and even other enemy's inorder to deal any damage.
• You're the Final Boss: This would just be a tradiditional twinstick shooter but you spawn with a bunch of ally's trying to kill the hero and each time you kill the hero you advance or alternativly each time you die you become the next more powerfull enemy with diffrent powers and shot patterns.
• Everything is a Weapon: A twinstick shooter where instead of starting is a gun or something like that you enstead grab enemys and use them as auto-firing weapons against there own kind
• You are a Side Character: Rather than play the hero in this twinstick you play as the orbital cannon following around the hero shielding him from fire and casting out small blast at enemys
• Shelter: A twin stick shooter crossed with a tower defense game. Every enemy you kill drops resources that can be used to build towers or upgrade your shelter. Your goal is to defend your shelter until you can build a becon to call for help.
• The more You Die, The more the World Dies: You are the guardian angle of a small island as foes siege the island you are on each time you die you wake up a year later (aka the next level) with the world falling apart slowly in your absence
• You Can't Save them All: You are a rescue ranger tasked with saving people from a burning forest fire use your water spay to put out flames and carry people to the rescue zone unfortunatley the clock is ticking and you won't have time to save every one.
• You are the Quest Giver: Start deep in a dungeon planting the holy grail inside on your way up activate all the monster spawners with your fire and try to escape without dieing. Once outside you stand and wait for the hero to apper so you can send them to retreave the holy grail.
• Contagious: You are a CDC decontamanation expert run around shooting people with your vaccine gun to stop the spread of a deadly contagion.
• You Control the Enemy: You are the enemy guiding the mindless minions into the spray of fire from the hopelessly incompident hero.
• Alchemy: Litterally just a twin stick shooter but instead of shooting bullets you lob potions at enemys (maybe the potions could all have a diffrent effects)
• Break the Cycle: A twin-stick shooter where your goal is to destroy the towers that create enemy waves rather than just defend in an endless cycle.
• Underground: A Twin-stick shooter but the arena's you fight in are underground fight clubs where you battle for the entertainment of the rich elite.
• Non-traditional Boss Battles: Rather than have a big boss where you have to fill him with even more bullets than a normal enemy you enstead have
• Two Characters, One Player: Take the controls of Brothers a Tale of Two Sons and use that as your twinstick movement each character moves in the same direction they are shooting.
• Tiny Town: You are a giant kaiju terrorizing the city use your twin stick action to destroy tanks and even some buildings

So yeah as you can see with some creativty even bad themes can turn into something not terrible. I really do recommend that you watch the video as Mr. Koster does a far better job talking about mixing genres and making entirely new genres that what I could ever hope to convey in my short sixteen theme ideas. Like I said I won't be doing anything with twin-stick shooters probably ever so feel free to rumage through my garage sale of ideas and take what you want, and always remember "The theme is eternally bad. Even when its good its bad, and if you think it can't be any worse just wait."

Also here are my votes for all the diffrent voting rounds so far.

All yes or no from me on these final themes. I know that if some theme I didn't want won I would be stuck thinking that it happened because of me using 0s rather than my + or -1s. Thankfully I know I can come up with a good idea for all of these themes. I'm still personally a little worried about the chance I will scope to big or worse scope to small (like I did for my LD43 game.) I have already got a pretty good idea about what genre of game I wan't to make this LD so I guess now all I can do is wait for the theme announcement and hope that its one of the good ones (fat chance I know, but you never know sometimes the impossible happens.)

I guess with only about six hour left before the start I should finally say officially that I am in. I'm gonna be using much the same tools as last time. - Unity 2K18.3 for my actual engine - Paint dot Net for all my 2D graphical needs - Blender for all my 3D needs - Audacity for all my audio editing needs - Household objects up to but not excluding my mouth for all my sound effect needs

I've already decided on what genre of game I am gonna try and create this LD, and no spoilers but its gonna be a sports game. I know not the most exciting genre but hopefully I will find some way to pull it off with aplomb. I unfortunattly have prior arangements tonight when the Compo offically starts so I probably won't get to actually start development tonight but its at 8 PM my time so I'm not to worried about it. That being said expect to see some pictures of my hand scrawled notes popping up pretty soon after compo starts. I am fixing to get in the top 50 this LD so I'm gonna be trying to push myself. Hopefully my ambition won't send me crashing back down to earth. So I guess I will post again in six hours untill then good luck everybody and may the theme be in your favor.

Unfortunately I also have family. Now I love my family, but some of them believe that things just sound better without headphones. Now how anybody can make out three different shows being played at the same time I don't know. One thing I do know it makes it practically impossible for me to hold a single though in my head. So I guess I'm gonna take a break for now. Fortunately I should soon be able to get to my private workspace and not leave for the rest of the Compo. Until then pray for me and for the love of god always remember to get headphones that have some good sound blocking potential.

I ended up going to bed last night around 2 AM. I figure at the point your forgetting what the variables in your code are there for it might be time for some shut-eye. All I really got done last night was making my scriptable objects in unity. That and I got a distracted and ended up implementing a feature that I did want in the game, but was slightly lower on my prioritys list.

So I guess at some point I gotta actually say what type of game I am making. Well fellow Jammers I am making a golf game. How you ask does a golf game fit the theme Your life is Currency I hear you cry out. Simple. You gotta win the golf tournament and claim the prize money otherwise some mobsters are gonna break every bone in your body. So turns out your life as a semi-pro golfer is worth exactly as much currency as the grand prize at the golf tournament... I know its a bit of a stretch but come on, whats a guy to do when he want's to make a golf game where your life is currency.

I've been up for about an hour and a half at this point so I am probably gonna take a quick break and eat breakfast. In the mean time I leave you with some video of my super rough golf game.

https://youtu.be/ZQ9mJ_Cj2NY

Also if your wondering why the camera is at that angle and why the field is so small. It because I am ripping of Golf for the NES. Also the cilinder is the hole in this video.

Its late. I'm tired. Gonna go to bed, and who knows maybe when I wake up I will be able to pull all this stuff together, but right now between you and me. I don't think its gonna happen. At least I learned some valuble information about myself and my development style. Anyway if anybody ever ask me "Whats your least favorite part about gamedev" my answer will eternally be quaternions and rotating things. I don't know what it is about them somehow every time they rear there ugly heads at me I am drawn like a moth to the flame, and the next thing I know three hours have past, I've done sixteen google searches, and finally I find the answer if something along the lines of "Don't use that function use this one". Good night and good luck to everybody still working away the hours.

Also forgive any spelling\grammer errors I am pretty sure the only thing holding me upright currently is the copius amounts of Mountain Dew Live Wire rushing through my bloodstream.

Once again I have done my civic duty and slaughtered many, many, many, themes. This year I found myself drawn to themes that where a single word or a simple concept. Its funny to say considering how few themes I voted yes on but this was a pretty good list of themes this year.

I quite enjoy suggesting themes. Always a challenge to find ones that are open enough to be interpreted in a multitude of ways, but at the same time limiting enough to spur creativity.

I tried to cover as many of the major types of themes as possible. Broken Hearts covers the literary type themes, Minimal Controls covers the gameplay type themes, and Bigger is better covers the bit of overlap between gameplay and literary themes. I went ahead and avoided putting in a setting theme because there is always like 500 of them in the slaughter (looking at you floating islands!)

Finished slaughtering themes. Did notice a few trends this year, lots of themes about climate change/global warming and I'm pretty sure I only saw themes making fun of floating islands, but no actual floating island theme. Overall I would say most themes where better than last years.

I can honestly say I wasn't to disappointed in any of these themes. I don't have a damned clue what I will do for like 3/4th of them but they are not the worst jam theme's I have ever seen (that trophy goes to the global game jam theme of 2019 "What home means to you" a theme so esoteric that I'm pretty sure I had to write an essay about it in middle school.)

The die is cast!

What better way to finish out voting on a theme for a Latin named game jam then to quote the most famous of all the Romans.

I am very excited I am planning on trying to stream some of my Jam on twitch.tv/TheseusInABottle . I still have some stuff to setup, but I should be all ready by Friday. I guess all that is left for me to do is to list my tools and remind everyone to vote factory.

Tools:

• Unity 2019.2 for the Engine
• Blender for 3D art
• Krita and\or Paint.net for 2D art
• Audacity for Audio\SFX
• Bosca Ceoil and\or Sunvox for Music\SFX
• Open Broadcast Software (OBS) for live streaming
• Chronolpase for a Timelapse
• Fontstruct.com for custom font

Just as a quick addendum to my tool list I plan to use FontStruct as a tool to make a custom font not to download a premade font. That being said I'm pretty sure premade fonts are counted as an exception even in the Compo so long as you are in your rights to use it. So if you are in dire need of a font or have a perfect idea for your game and want to make a matching font I recommend it as a tool its pretty simple to use.

Also final reminded to vote for Factory because its the best theme!