Hello everyone, I felt like I wanted to write a summary post of my experiences, things I learned and things I should've learned beforehand during the 40th Ludum Dare.

This wasn't the first time I participated, my first Ludum Dare was 3-4 years ago, and I tried to complete a game like 8 times so far. Of course, I couldn't finish them all, but this time I'm very proud of myself, because I could apply lots of things I experienced during these past events.

I will now share a few of my advices and experiences that helped me finish.

ALWAYS SLEEP WHEN YOU'RE TIRED

In my country (Hungary), Ludum dare usually starts at 3:00 AM. In the past I always went to sleep early, to be able to wake up at around 2 am, grab a coffee and hop on the IRC channel to get to know the theme early. This usually resulted in my bio-cycle completely being messed up, and in the days to come I found it very hard to stay focused.

This time though I went to bed at the usual time, and got up around 8:00 AM, and maintained my usual sleep-cycle during the 3 days. I was very much suprised how clear my mind was during all three days.

LEARN MATH

The first few times I was in high school, and had absolutely no idea how 3D graphics worked, how to do vector and matrix math. Now, after a year at university I have learned all of these basic skills in math, and lots of things I found hard to make were easy-peasy. There are plenty of online game development sources, from where you can learn these kinds of things, I would very much advise you do so, if you haven't already.

LEARN YOUR TOOL

I used libGDX for the 5th time I think at a Ludum Dare, so I knew it in and out ... at least I though so. Basic things, like sprite batchers, cameras, the weird coordinate system, application lifecycle were natural to me, but when I got to UI skining, it took me three times the time I estimated for it to take. I would advise you to use only the tools you know how to use, and learn new things beforehand, or after the Ludum Dare. 2-3 days are very short to know new design principles (conventional OOP design VS ECS in Unity for example), and technologies.

NEVER START WITHOUT A CONCEPT

Multiple times I failed, because I didn't have a concept from the first hour, and just started to write some boilerplate code, thinking that it would lead somewhere. SPOILER ALERT: It didn't. Always have a concept, and only start working on the code, or assets when you know exactly what you're going to create, and only minor things are left to be thought through.

I would also like to include some things I learned during this particular LD:

• When you're doing hexagons, do it according to the book. I started using my own coordinate system for hexagons, where the center tile was (0, 0), left from it were negative X coords, and to the right were positive coords. This led to some weird design choices, for example I couldn't just index my tiles, I had to store them in a simple List, and I had to do some not-so-optimal HashMap magic to be able to query a single tile at the given coordinates.
• If you're doing UI, don't start making your own UI framework, use the one provided. I made some ugly classes to represent buttons, and panels, but in the end I found myself replacing all of this code with the libGDX Stage system.

That concludes my thoughts about this particular LD, and in general. I hope I could give good advice to some new comers, and I wish all of your games the very best of luck!

If you want to, you can check out my game at https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/dem-colors

Hello all,

This is my 9th Ludum Dare, and I have to say, I totally understand why some people may be upset about this theme. I've seen many posts in the last few days that were complaining about the choosable themes, and I myself was not absolutely happy when I first saw the top rated one on twitter. But I believe I found the reason:

During these many occasions, I had the chance to observe the "categories" of people / teams that participate in this event. I believe there are 3 kinds of game makers around:

• Newcomers: Usually it's there first or second entry, they may or may not be professionals, but they usually use a pretty high level engine, like Game maker, or Unity. This is is broadest of all groups, and they seem to be really excited about these exotic themes. This is probably because they haven't had the chance to think for many long hours on what type of game to make from a horrible theme, and they usually vote +1 for those themes I myself would never vote for.
• Programmers: They do not have amazing drawing skills, but they can make their game much more bug-free, smooth, and featurefull. Their entries are the most complete ones, usually with just the right amount of gameplay, but extremely polished. (I believe I fall into this category)
• Artists: They are not programmers, but they can create the best looking 3D models, and amazing pixel art / high-res textures, music, animations, they are the most creative ones around. Usually, they use Unity and Unreal engine, because they are much more artist friendly. They also vote +1 for the more creative themes, as it may be easier for them to figure out what game to create around them.

Now, this theme may upset the more programming oriented ones in the community, but remember, there are still 2 other groups, and they are much broader; we just have to swallow it, and start working on our concept to bring something to the table.

I wish everyone an amazing weekend, an amazing fun, and can't wait to see the games!

Theme: Combine 2 incompatible genres

As it seems, my crappy DSL internet connection skipped a character when it was transmitting the theme, so the theme became Combine 2 incompatible genes

:P

I just wanted to show off what I have so far

Mesmorizing ...

Huge progress being made, lots of bugs being fixed, 12 hours in I feel confident about finishing it in 48 hours .. and I'm pretty sure I can make it in 72 hours in the worst case.

Had awful toothache whole week, turns out my teeth died ... without any reason ... X-Ray and dental check showed nothing, but root canal therapy had to be performed ... now one of my teeth is left wide open, so I'm basically not allowed to eat, and have to take 4-5 painkillers every day to bare the pain ... BUT I'M IN!

I was waiting for this weekend for like a month, took 2 days off work, so I won't let some naughty tooth take my weekend away from me :)

Regarding the theme, it's not the worst I've seen, if I recall correctly I voted +1 for this one.

I wish all of you a productive weekend and can't wait to see your games :)

PS: Maybe this amount of painkillers will give me some extra creativity :)

Hey guys!

So since everyone is once again sharing the fact they are in for the next event, I'm happy to announce that I am most certainly, probably in! Though university may have a few things to say about that, but if all goes well, nothing can stop me from spending 72 hours straight to code my next LD game!

I really am hoping for a unique theme, here are my suggestions:

Anyway, I am also struggling to decide what platform to use this time. I don't want to make the change from libGDX, but it really hasn't seen many releases lately, and I am missing some innovation from the release branch ... maybe I'll either try HTML5, I even considered giving Godot a shot (although its scripting language does leave some to be desired for me ...). I would be happy to hear your opinions about the topic, another perspective would come really handy now.

I am hoping many people can make it this time too, and would like to wish you all a fun weekend in advance :)

Hey everyone!

Just wanted to ask if anyone had this problem on the site. So I'm trying to add a third and a forth member to our game, but just can't do it ... I can select the person, it appears in the list, I go to preview, I can see it, I click Save, it's still there, but when I reload the page, the person disappears.

If anyone has a fix for this issue, can you please let us know? :)

EDIT: Looks like it just needed some time. Never mind ... Good luck everyone! :)

I just wanted to write the obligatory "we are in" post, because WE ARE IN!

This will be my 10th attempted, and hopefully 8th completed LD. This one is special, because it's the first for OUR TEAM! We are a new (and completely UNfamous) indie team from Hungary, working on a super-secret project, but I've managed to convince everyone on the team that Ludum Dare is the very best thing. To my surprise, EVERYONE was super hyped about getting up at 3:00 AM to make a game in 72 hours!

Let me introduce everyone:

• First off, we have @macibacsi56, our writer and glorious leader
• We have two wonderful 2D artists: @littlemaow and @ringabell. They will be responsible for dropping all of your jaws with sprites, backgrounds and anything that requires painting, drawing or animation.
• @zoolee-art is also joining to create the most amazing 3D models. He is an absolute pro when it comes to assets.
• And finally myself to make the code that turns all of this into an interactive experience

See you around, and have fun during this weekend! :)