Good evening everyone!

This will be my first time joining the Ludum Dare game Jam. I'm very excited to go head-first into this new adventure. Although I have some experience creating games, I actually never finished one and I like the process of designing the engine more. This weekend will be the first time I design a game from scratch.

I won't use an engine, just javascript (yes, javascript.. I don't like that language at all, but it is flexible enough for me to feel comfortable). It was recommended to create some sort of browsergame, and I like to have control over every pixel. I'll also use a combination of PHP and a MySQL database to make some sort of interaction between players possible. It won't store any personal or sensitive information, just an alias at most. The plan behind is not defined yet, I just like interactivity to play a role in the upcomming game.

Maybe you think I'm crazy not using any kind of engine, but as a low-level system-programmer I'm somehow used to it, and I like to have control over every aspect of the game.

The thing I am most nervous about is the fact that the theme will be revealed saturday at 00:00AM here in the Netherlands. I'm not the most productive late at night (which is funny because programmers are known of their productiveness in the middle of the night). I'll just look at the theme, will spend an hour brainstorming some ideas and then I'll take a good night rest to start at 07:30AM in the morning.

You can follow my progress here on the Ludum Dare website, or on my website: http://wouter52.com/?page=ld47

Good evening everyone!

It is time to show you my strange but extremely effective setup. Let me walk you through.

The whole system runs on Linux (elementaryOS to be specific). It is my favorite OS, but there is one teeny, tiny detail that just won't run stable on it. My favorite paint program: Paint.NET. That is why I have a separate virtual machine with Windows XP just to run it. Don't worry, I am aware XP is dead for years. I won't do taxes on that system of course :stuckouttonguewinkingeye:

Over at the right-hand side of the photo, you can see my rubber duck. It helps debugging by just listening to my frustrations. It is called "the rubber ducky effect", google it if you are unaware or skeptical about this effect.

I use pen and paper to keep notes. That is how I like to do it, I was that weirdo in IT class writing everything down while everyone else used OneNote or some other kind of note-taking-app

Lastly, a good office-chair. It is not on the photo, but I think it is the most important of all. I encourage all of you to find a good chair to sit on to spare your back. You only have one of those ;-)

Stay tuned for more! I'm planning to share some more stories about my first Ludum Dare Adventures

Good afternoon!

I hope everyone is doing well :smile:

My first milestone has been reached: getting a working piece of code that looks like a game. I made a log about progress thus far.

The first part of the day was troublesome. I could'n get the colliders to work properly. The character (which is a square right now, use your imagination) was just glitching all over the place. I started work at around 08:00AM. Around 12:00PM I was satisfied with the colliders.

Around 13:00PM I started at trying to get the level centered around the character (which is still a square). That was surprisingly easy! Withing 10 minutes I had the code working. After that I went on and tried creating an infinite loop. The idea is that the level will expand over time, the first time you play, it will be one screen looping around. When you revisit the level, it will have an extra screen. Getting that to work was surprisingly easy too! It took around an hour and a half.

The last half hour I spent on experimenting with the level layouts. I have to somehow program some rules so the computer can generate screens on it's own.

Some of the next steps are: Generating screens, Creating overworld (4 levels in a loop, every level will expand by one screen after playing), Creating some awesome graphics, Creating enimies, Creating sounds

Within 30 minutes from publishing this log, I will be away for a few hours (life is calling). I would appreciate if you could play it and give some feedback if you have time :-)

You can play it here: http://wouter52.com/?page=LD47_PART1&standalone=1

Good morning!

This morning I spent polishing the random level generation.

Yesterday the platforms generated where too much disconnected. I wanted them to connect more so the textures will look more interesting in the end. Turns out: the code was not optimized to identify each platform using their coordinates. That were just randomly put in a list without order. I had to program code to make it possible to identify platforms by their position in the level. Eventually it worked, using that code I made some more functions that return the offset of the neighbors in blocks.

So, for example: a platform has a platform 2 blocks above it. If you call that function asking for the nearest top neighbor it will return 2. This is very useful. I made a heatmap deciding where to connect the platforms using that code. I realized I could reuse the same code to add power ups, so I did! Now it is time to add enemies. I want to have several enemy types: circling enemies, walking enemies and stationary enemies. If I have time I'll let them shoot too! You have to avoid the enemies, maybe I'll add code that you can kill them by jumping on top, but only if I have time.

As you can see the levels are built out of blocks. That will change, I just wanted to have the functionality right (and I'm procrastinating creating graphics haha).

You can try it here: http://wouter52.com/?page=LD47_PART2&standalone=1 Feedback is appreciated :-)

Good evening everyone!

I hope you had a blast of a time making games this weekend! My work is done, a lot has been added since my last blog post. For instance: there are graphics now! I'm especially proud of the donut-shaped overworld. It turned out gorgeous if I say so myself :-) Sadly I did not create 100% of all the graphics myself. So to be fair I disabled rating the graphics. If you like it, please tell me! That would be wonderful :-)

The game is about a thief hungry for gold. Every year he goes to the same places to collect it. Because he gets to know each place better and better, the levels will expand each time it is played. Every level loops around, if you completed the loop, a door will appear so you can escape from the cops and their iron drones!

You can say that the thief is a typical "CRYSOPHILIST"!

All levels are "limitless", they are all computer-generated. There is also a working high score table :-)

This was my first time joining the Ludum Dare gamejam. I had a lot of fun and I learned a lot. I actually liked the theme. First I had no ideas, but within an hour I drew up a plan that eventually became CRYSOPHILIST.

You can play the game by browsing to: https://wouter52.com/CRYSOPHILIST/

I published the game, so you can give feedback an rate :D

Good evening everyone!

Tonight I have some time to rate and play some games :-)

My game already received 14 ratings. I don't know if that is good or bad, but for all I know that is pretty awesome! I'm only 6 ratings away from hitting 20 and being able to see my scores :-)

So, lets scratch each other's backs shall we? I have the habit to rate people's games who gave some feedback on mine. That way everyone benefits from it. When there are no games to play from people who gave feedback I like to hang out in the "Danger filter" to help people out. (I really hope I don't get 200 reactions now, that will be a lot of work keeping that promise haha)

My game is a simple platformer that expands every time you revisit a level. It is about a thief hungry for gold. Hence the name. The objective is to collect a lot of points and get at the top of the high score table.

Hi everybody!

This game jam has been eye-opening for me. I had a lot of fun and I learned a lot of stuff in the meantime. Stuff about what went right and what went wrong. Below a summary:

Have one or two 'Blackboxtesters' Yes, that's a real term for testers who don't know anything about the product they are testing. I did not have any of those. My wonderful girlfriend has been test playing all weekend long and I also had friends helping out tremendously. However, they knew the concept of the game. So small details that could be mistaken for bugs were perfectly logical for them. For instance: after submitting the game a lot of you thought that the autumn level had a bug where the player would shift to the left or right. My 'test team' knew about the wind-feature in that level and so did not even think once that it could have been mistaken as a bug.

Polish polish polish Another thing I realized is that a game is more fun to play if there is a catchy jingle playing in the background and if there are more fun background graphics to look at. These things did not have priority for LD47. A lot of the feedback given by the community is that there is a lack of music/background graphics.

Plan time to implement given feedback I got a lot of awesome feedback from all of you. However, I don't really have time to make a second version of the game implementing all the feedback. Next time I'll plan a day in the weekend after submission to implement all the feedback :-)

Getting the game mechanics right soon By spending the majority of the first day fine tuning the characters' movement I did not have to think about that the rest of the time. Ok, the jumping in my game feels a bit strange in hindsight, but i'm very happy with it. And I'm happy spending the first part of the jam doing that task. It resulted in reaching my milestone on schedule: getting a working prototype within 8 hours after staring development.

More than one season of playtime At a party my girlfriend and I have been thinking about the time it would take to play CRYSOPHOLIST all the way through. In theory all the levels are infinate, but I set a hard limit to 1024 screens per level for performance reasons. We calculated it like this:

Every screen takes approximately 5 seconds to play we thought. Every time you end a level, the next level gains a screen to play. So the first time playing a level you will have one screen, the second time two screens, etc.

The formula for this is: (1024 * (1024+1)) / 2 = 524800 screens per level to play

Every screen takes approx. 5 seconds: 524800 * 5 = 2624000 seconds

There are 4 levels: 2624000 * 4 = 10496000 seconds

Seconds to minutes: 10496000 / 60 = 174933

Minutes to hours: 174933 / 60 = 2915

Hours to days: 2915 / 24 = 121

Days to weeks: 121 / 7 = 17

Days to months: 121 / 30 = >3 months!

After those 3 months you can still play infinitely, but the levels won't get bigger anymore. If you have not played it yet and want to take it for a spin you can visit it here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/crysophilist

Good evening everyone!

Last year I joined Ludum Dare for the first time. I had lots of fun and made some friends along the way :smile: The theme back then was "Stuck in a loop", I'm sure lots of you still remember that theme :sweat_smile: The whole process felt like the image I shared here haha. The game I made had some useful feedback though, I'll share the most noteworthy ones:

• Add some background music if you have the time
• Add a background to side-scrolling levels (don't leave it empty)
• Make something special. Something that is interesting in some way. Not "just a game".
• If something could be misinterpret as a bug, make sure it very clear it is not a bug :sweat_smile:
• People liked the score system very much

I won't use an engine, just javascript. I still don't like that language at all, but it's very fast to code and does the job well enough for me. I want the game to be playable inside almost every desktop browser. For the backend I'll use a combination of PHP and MySQL. The scoreboard in my previous game was received very well, so I'll do my best to integrate some sort of interaction between players again (e.g. a scoreboard, or some other approach).

I have an extra personal limitation for this year's game. There has to be a king in my game! As I'm from the Netherlands and the submission day happens to be Kings day (Koningsdag) in the Netherlands. I thought it would be funny :crown: :smiley:

This year the theme will be revealed at 03:00AM Dutch time. Which is a bit crazy for me. My plan is to go to bed early and to wake up around 05:30AM. Then I can look at the theme and think about ideas while I eat some breakfast. Hopefully that will be enough to get the most awesome game-ideas known to mankind :smile:

You can follow my progress here on the ludum dare website, or on my website: http://wouter52.com/?page=ld48

Alright everybody! In less than 10 hours the game jam will start! Most people are prepping their setup for a weekend full of designing, programming and (hopefully not) headaches.

Let me show you around my workplace for this weekend. It is made pure for comfort. I numbered the most important stuff:

1: a system loaded with Elementary OS (a Linux system), a simple code-editor, Trello for tracking progress and a music library FULL OF Bee Gees (to stay ~~alive~~ in focus)

2: a virtual machine with Windows XP and Paint.NET. It is the only (advanced?) image-editor that is simple enough for me to wrap my head around ^^"

3: The rubber duck for the desperate moments when a self-inflicted bug just won't die

4: a calculator for fast calculations

5: a note block, pen and markers for the idea's (as you can tell now, I'm pretty old-fashioned in some ways)

6: a laptop (and our cat "Nova"), so we can catch some sunlight while I do some small stuff for the game-programming

I wish everyone as much luck and fun in the world! I look forward for all the different creations after the weekend is over :smiley:

Hello there everybody!

I decided to go a route I would never think I would take. I'm making sort-of a text adventure where one innocent lie deepens to extreme (funny?) consequences :sweat_smile: Right now I'm plotting the whole story.

The official idea was to create 8 stories with each 8 layers of complexity and an average of 2.5 choices. I have been calculating and that means that I would end up with close to 1500 end results :fearful: a bit much for a jam I would think :laughing:

So I decided to do one story first with 4 to 8 layers of complexity. After the game is complete, I can always add more if there is time.

Here are three examples of consequences:

Have you ever lied about eating a cookie when you were a kid? Well, in this epic text-based adventure you will, and it will escalate faster than you can chew…

Epic chase scenes, people getting abducted, a Dutch province getting blown to pieces, the king making a guest appearance. In this text-adventure it all happens. There are more than 64 possible outcomes for you to explore. The adventures are short and crunchy, so it won’t take long to complete one or two.

After your adventure is done, your lie will be shared automatically among the other gamers. The results of all played adventures are listed on the bottom of the page.

You can find it here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/the-coockie-is-a-lie

This year will be a bit different for me, as I'm joining forces with @ithebreather ! We are real life friends since 15 years now. I am a systemprogrammer and he designs air ducts in buildings (pretty sure he designed the ones in the Rock & Roll History Museum too).

Ithebreather's passion is mainly creating the best graphics in town and my passion is mainly programming pieces of complex code. Our goal is to have lots of fun while making the most epic game you have ever played in your life!

As Ithebreather is skilled with Unity, I took the leap and dusted of the ol'mate Windows partition on my Linux PC to install Unity and to take a crash course to get myself familiar. If our idea works with Unity, then we will use that. Otherwise I'll fall back to plain ol' javascript to botch the game together :-)

We are looking forward this next weekend and what creations everyone will come up with :-) Have fun everyone! And stay hydrated!

In less than six hours the theme will be announced. I am HYPED! I will be working together with a friend this time (@ithebreather ). This is our schedule for the first day!

1. When the theme is announced, we do not check it right away, but we go to sleep for the full 8 hours.
2. My friend will arrive and we will look at the theme together. Then the magical creative process will happen.
3. ...
4. Profit!

No, but all seriousness: we will actually find out what the theme is about 9 hours later. That way we will start brainstorming together, we thought that would be more fun.

Things I learned last time: - If you add a scoreboard, make sure to support characters like "öäåáàèé" - People loved the addition of a character creator. Some kind of player interaction makes the game more fun. - If you are making a text adventure, please realize that the majority of the time won't be programming or making graphics. I spent a total of 24 hours perfecting the plot last time. As a programmer, that was not the most fun experience haha - If you do something with genders, think about it carefully :-)

For the newcommers: first of all, welcome and have fun! Don't forget, the most important part of this weekend is YOU! So: - Stay hidrated - Take care of yourself - Make sure to take a strawl once in a while to clear your mind - If you have access to a good deskchair, use it properly to spare your back. Or take a strawl more often if you are limited to the kitchenchair of a couch. - Don't overscope your project to prevent stress.

We started two hours ago, after a long brainstorm session this is a good representation of our idea:

Alright! Sadly we didn’t finish the game.. Once again we chose one of those ideas that was just to ambitious to finish in just 2 days.. We had simpler ideas, but we stuck with the one that we laughed the most about! And then! You gotta condense your funny idea down to fundementals and codable rules.. Which is (where I think) we went wrong.. The idea was all fun and games, but we didn’t get anything settled down. We spend the first 24 hours on getting our game on, and got busy on “uhhhh how did that work again”.. Sadly, it got to the best of us.. Eventually we did get back on track, got our priorities going, got the crucial things done, but didn’t have enough time to get the crucials down.. So… Lets call this a Demo.. :sweat_smile:

The idea:

Our idea was to play as someone who is unstable, where you gotta make the right choice. In everyday life your brain makes an easy decision. But in the end, you don’t want to give a rasional one. And in this game, you have to try to control that decision. You gotta find out how to make a, and ‘the’ right decision!

Try to keep your mood up! And try to manage the chaos along the way!

We would appreciate if you play it, rate it and give us some feedback :-)

Because we consider it as a demo, you can leave feedback anonymously if you like to. So don't hold back, we love to learn :smiley:

Congratz everyone! I see that the results are in :smile: Our entry is in the top 100 for innovation, which is great! A personal goal of mine is to end up in the top 100 for one of the categories :slight_smile:

Quick question, how many games were submitted? Is there a way to find out? I would like to see how the scores are in relation to the whole bunch :innocent:

LD50 already! This is the 4th time I'm joining. Quick summary of previous entries:

1st time, theme "endless loop": I made an endless looping platformer. I fell in love with LD and the community right away! The feedback was supporting and helpful. Every year I look at the previous feedback to try incorporate into the next entry.

2nd time, theme "deeper and deeper": I made a text adventure. Developing the story was tedious, but the result was very funny and the end result was pretty fun. Bonus: my family knew what to do right away! (point&click is easy to pickup of course)

3rd time was a colab with Ithebreather! The theme was "Unstable". My friend and I had the idea to create a game where you play inside the head of a mentally unstable person who goes to a restaurant to order some food. The end result is a demo, but developing it was so much fun!

======

======

4th time I'll do in solo again, my friend could not make it this time. My personal goals for LD50: - Have fun while developing - Get enough sunlight - Don't develop back problems - Get into the top 100 for one of the categories - Being able to create all graphics and sounds myself

Somehow I hope the theme will be something surreal this time, the picture above is something I would consider almost surreal. Something like "Backrooms", "Dali" or maybe even "Euclidean space" would result in some wacky games!

Feedback from last entries I'll keep in mind: - Make sure the player gets enough feedback from the game - Some kind of scoreboard makes the game more fun - Make the game something special, something a little bit different than usual

Tools I'll be using: - Paint.net + maybe Windows 11 paint if I feel cute - Audacity + SFXR/BFXR (maybe..) - Notepad++ (if I decide to use my arch nemesis; javascript) - Unity (if I decide to go 3D, which is a risk.. I don't know unity that well yet) - Pen and paper for making notes

Have fun everyone! Don't forget to stay hydrated and use a good chair!

I'm listening to Pink Floyed with Echoes on repeat right now, just in case Echoes wins; I have a fun idea that requires me to know this song in every detail possible :-)

This is my contribution, I hope it won't influence other's opinions :-)

I am very excited for coming weekend! Music is an important part of my life. Here are some music pieces I'll probably listen to during the jam :-)

• System of a Down - www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DMM87DMF5o
• Clutch - www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0D7hnwIik8
• Pink Floyed Tribute band Live - www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYbm096uzEc
• Groundswell (Three Days Grace) - www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aFO_ruTdf0
• Everything from BeeGees
• Everything from Roxette

Does anyone have suggestions in the same line as the ones listed above? Or did you think about music to keep you sane durning the weekend? :-)