I've been into game development for many years now, almost exclusively using Game Maker, but I have barely done anything in the past couple years since my last ludum dare (38 I think). It just crossed my mind and apparently it's on in a couple days... I am complete unprepared. First off, I'm now exclusively running Linux on my computer which makes things difficult. I've spent the past few hours trying to get GMS2 running but to no success, then I remembered that I bought Pico-8 a while ago to try out. Turns out Pico-8 works perfectly on Linux so I guess that's what I'll be using for this ludum dare. To be honest, I actually really like Pico-8, it has everything I need to make games in the one small program, problem is I haven't experimented much with it. Going to spend a lot of time over the next couple days getting to know Pico-8 so that I'm able to make a half-decent game with it for LD41. Wish you all the best!!

Everyone else was making one of these posts so I decided to as well. I've entered a few jams before by myself, hard to put a definite number on it because some jams I spent 50-60 hours working on the game, others I only spent 10. I also used to use Game Maker Studio but since I'm now running Linux on my computer, I'm unable to use it so time to experiment with Pico-8. Definitely looking forward to using it, I love the simplicity yet depth of it.

Game Engine: Pico-8

Language: Lua on Pico-8

IDE: Pico-8

Graphics: Pico-8

SFX: Pico-8

Music: Pico-8

Sleep: Probably, no guarantees

This is the one theme I didn't want, I have no clue what I'm going to do..

Been thinking about this theme all day, now I'm home and I can start working on the game. Still have absolutely NO idea what I'm going to make

Been thinking about this for a while but I think I've got a pretty cool game idea, let's see if I can pull it off!!

A couple hours ago I said that I had come up with a great idea, I didn't want to share it until I had a prototype to demonstrate how it'll work but that prototype is now finished. Introducing, Yaxis, a 1D platformer. I spent many hours thinking of what to do with the current theme and this is the best idea I could come up with.

If you want to test out the prototype, click here: https://timeload.itch.io/yaxis

Controls: left/right to move and up to jump

Here's an image to show you what the level looks like so you can get an understanding of what's going on:

If you have any feedback or would like to suggest some ideas, feel free to leave a comment :)

I didn't spend much time developing my game today, I went out with friends and by the time I got back I had already missed out on about 7 hours. Then I continued to spend 1 hour thinking of a game, spent a while on that before coming to the conclusion that I didn't like it and then thought up my current idea which I think will turn in to an awesome game. Currently just got a small prototype of my 1D platformer game, not much is new since my last update. Just cleaned up a lot of my code and added sound affects for jumping, landing and hitting a ceiling. Thought these sound affects would help people figure out what's happening around them.

test my game: https://timeload.itch.io/yaxis

2D map so you can follow along in-game:

please tell me what you think and if you have any suggestions :)

It's not much of a visual update since last time, but I've done a lot of work to the code changing up ways the graphics are drawn and how levels are loaded in. I know it's a very minimalist approach but I feel like it suits the game :)

check out my game here: https://timeload.itch.io/yaxis

decided that I'd have an 8 hour nap so that I can smash through these last few hours to polish up my game and build some levels. I've got pretty much everything working, just need to add in a level select screen and create levels for the game. After that there's some code that I can neaten up to make the game run a bit smoother.

test out my game here: https://timeload.itch.io/yuaxis

I haven't spent as much time on my game as others here due to having plans, but I'm happy with what I created. This was my first time making a game with Pico-8 which meant a lot of trial and error but I got there in the end. I'm very happy with how it turned out :)

Make sure to test and rate it: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/$79826

Compo is officially over, been that way for nearly an hour, but I just realised something that I should probably add to my game description. If I edit my game description will it remove it from the compo? Because it's technically considered changed since I published it?

I had so many people commenting on my post with suggestions of how to better my game I simply couldn't ignore them any longer. I realise that LD41 is still going and I shouldn't be updating my game anymore, so I moved my game to another project and changed the links and now I've got a project on itch.io with my most updated version of the game. Check it out!!

https://timeload.itch.io/yaxis

One of my favourite streamers, ElysiaGriffin, just started her stream and will be on for about 14 hours streaming LD games. You can submit your game to her queue and she'll play it live. If we can get more people watching and submitting games then it'll serve for some great advertisement and get you some ratings :)

https://www.twitch.tv/elysiagriffin

So funny story, I completely forgot about LD41 for some reason :P I remember in the first two or three days I received about 48-50 ratings, then I kinda forgot about Ludum Dare and stopped playing games which then led to not many people playing my games and thus I didn't get many ratings. I only got about 60ish ratings for my game and still managed to place 22nd in the Innovation category and got 210th overall, no clue how. I'm sure there's many games that got hundreds of ratings and since I only got 60, I'm shocked that I managed to place 210th overall out of over 3,500 submissions.

Lost track of how many Ludum Dares I've entered under however many usernames, but this'll be my second one under TimeLoad. Definitely going to be a lot of fun, but now that I'm working full-time, I don't know how I'm going to go.

Since I live in Australia, Ludum Dare starts at 1pm on Saturday for me. The problem is, I work full-time and Ludum Dare finishes at 1pm on the Monday. If I do enter, that means I'll only have at most 20 hours of development time because I can't do anything on the Monday. Because of my limited time, I'm not even going to attempt anything with Unity or Game Maker, I'm going straight to Pico-8. I used it last year and fell in love with its simplicity. Everything I need is right there in the one software and it's so easy to use and export my code. If anyone out there is restricted on time like me, I recommend spending the next couple weeks getting familiar with Pico-8

A few years ago I was entering in heaps of Ludum Dare competition (on a different account) using Game Make Studio (and Game Maker Studio 2 when it came out). I have many years of experience with it and it's a great engine, but I never felt like it suited me for game jams. Last Ludum Dare I entered I decided to use pico-8 and I loved it.

At first it felt really restricted and I hated that I had to create my own physics and collision engines, but in the end I felt like the simplicity and restrictions really helped me focus on the gameplay instead of the graphics/sound and improved my overall creativity.

Now my next Ludum Dare is coming up and I haven't done any gamedev in the past couple years. I'm trying to figure out whether I want to go back to Game Maker Studio 2 (which I'd have to buy the licenses again) or if I should stick with pico-8.

Ludum Dare 45 is less than a week away and I am definitely not prepared enough. Which is why I'm participating in Open Jam 2019 and I encourage everyone to join! It's only a weekend jam and not many people are competing, but it'll be fun nevertheless.

The theme is "The Future". Pretty vague, but enough to work with.

If you want to follow my progress, follow me on Twitter @TimeLoadDev

Not as great as I was hoping they'd be, but there's a couple that I think I'd enjoy. I'd be very keen to do 3 colors, mainly because I suck at pixel art and I'll be using pico-8 so it'll help restrict me even further in terms of graphics.

"Games that shouldn't be in first person done in first person" I find way way too specific. From what I can tell, this is basically restricting every game to be 3D and in first person. Yeah, it could result in some really cool games, but for people like me who don't make 3D games and are restricted to 2D engines (GMS2 and pico-8 in my case), then it basically means I can't compete in this Ludum Dare. I know I could just learn how to use Unity, but with only 3 days left, I don't want to learn an entire new engine just for one game jam.

"One item, many uses" also peaked my interest. I don't know what kind of game I'd make, but I can see this theme resulting in some really interesting themes.

I won't be able to start anything for another 20ish hours because of work and other prior arrangements and honestly I don't know what to do.

The theme is too vague for me and I'm struggling with ideas. The only thing I can think of right now is a cliche survival game.

Guess I'll have the next 20ish hours to think about it.