[Ludum Dare] 28 - 13-16 December 2013

The Ludum Dare 28 is happening over this coming weekend. I find it strange that (from what I have seen) no one has mentioned it here on Make Games SA.
So whats up, are some of you thinking of participating?

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/

Comments

  • I am going to. Would be my first one.
  • I'll be sitting this one out methinks. Maybe next time!
  • I detest the Ludumdare themes for the comps. In all the events I have ever donw I don thtink there was 1 theme I really enjoyed working to. (I think I did 3 of the Ludumdare compos - about numbers 3,5, and 9).
  • No idea how it worked back then, but for 28 they recently (this weekend?) had a "theme slaughter" thing where you are presented with one theme at a time from a huge pool, and then you vote "Good", "Bad", or "Slaughter". Right now they are running 5 more rounds of voting from the highest voted themes in the "Theme slaughter"

    I shall list them here :)

    Corruption
    Creation
    Duel
    Falling
    Free 2 Play (what? :S)
    Genetics
    Gods
    Illusion
    Immortality
    Memory
    Night and Day
    Not alone
    No violence
    Opposites
    Orbit
    Resources
    Second Chance
    Sudden change
    The sun is gone
    Three Worlds
    Trapped

    Anyway I wish every one who is going to participate luck and I hope you end up with a unfinished game you can be proud of!

    @maninbucket a word of advice since this will be your first, Do not be overambitious! :P
  • Do not be overambitious! :P
    And whatever you plan to do; cut that in half!

  • Haha. Thanks for the advice. I sense thats experience talking.
  • As far as I can remember they have always had the +1 0 -1 voting system. I just feel their themes are always nongame based ideas. From that list above, things like "The sun is gone", and "Free 2 play"..... Those arn;t themes to build a game around (my opinion).

    I really want to do something this time. But already half the weekend is gone due to family events ;) - will see if I can do something - even if it is something small (click and move puzzle game or something).
  • @cairnswm Ah, well I think themes like "the sun is gone" is ripe for making a very good game, soooo many possibilities to twist it :D and yeah something like "free 2 play" is not what I want as a game theme, but it would work very well for satire. I see that as the challenge and part of the fun, how do you adapt the theme to work for you? how will your game make the theme come across clearly? Think back to your school days and the creative writing essays :P thats where you develop that skill to bend things to the "dark" side.

    Round 2:
    Bieber 4Evar <3
    Break The System
    Clones
    Closed Doors
    Contamination
    Differences
    Dig Deeper
    End of The Universe
    Four Elements
    Insanity
    Lost
    Malfunction
    Reflection
    Regeneration
    Shadow
    Strength In Numbers
    Survival
    The Beginning is The End
    The Fourth Dimension
    Time and Space
    You Only Get One

    Round 3:
    Chaos
    Chemicals
    Death is Useful
    downvote me
    Forces of Nature
    Fortress
    Hard Decisions
    Infinity
    Invention
    Looting
    Mind Control
    Opposite Effect
    Paradoxes
    Seasons
    Size is Relative
    Stranded
    Surveillance
    Symbiosis
    Teleportation
    Transformation
    Uncertainty
  • Goes to show we all have our own opinions ;)
    Thanked by 1Pixel_Reaper
  • round 4:

    Cells
    Connections
    Ecosystem
    Electricity
    Everyone Dies in the End
    Gravity
    Hostile World
    Infestation
    Inverse Superpowers
    Isolation
    Life Cycle
    Lost in Space
    Nightmare
    No Enemies
    Replacement
    Revolution
    Rise and Fall
    Two Colors
    Unseen
    YOU ARE NOT In Control
  • last round of voting:

    Break The System
    Chaos
    Clones
    Connections
    Contamination
    Corruption
    Creation
    Death is Useful
    Duel
    End of The Universe
    Falling
    Fortress
    Four Elements
    Genetics
    Illusion
    Night And Day
    No Enemies
    No Violence
    Two Colors
    You Only Get One
  • For those participating, check out Indiestatik's excellent 10 tips to get your game jam game played: http://indiestatik.com/2013/11/20/game-jam-advice/

    Thanked by 1Pixel_Reaper
  • I'll see if I can throw together something very basic while on holiday...
  • Theme: "You only get one"


    My ideas
    You only get one - life
    You only get one - home
    You only get one - chance
    You only get one - charge
    You only get one - choice
  • When you get something up and running post here for comments. Busy as well. My idea is you only have one look.
  • Busy with a pinball game. You only have 1 life.
  • making a multiplayer game, with "ninjas", "stealth", one-hit-kills, and one life per round
  • edited
    Got a small app up and running on my android phone (using Basic 4 Android). Now I just need an idea....

    image
    LD48-Screen1.png
    322 x 479 - 213K
  • I am making a space survival sim. You're the only surviving ship from a doomed planet.
    Heres a video of my progress.


    I got the basic movement mechanics one, now I want to add collectables, health and enemies... in other words make a game out of the ship movement :/
    Thanked by 1Merrik
  • about 33 hours in and this is what I have so far https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/199184153/LD28.html
    one unexpected bug with hit detection + respawn wasted a lot of my time, being tired didn't help :(
    looks like I wont make the compo deadline, but at least that means I can now get someone else to help me with the sound :P
    aiming for the jam now

    things I still need to do:
    1. BLOOD!
    2. make it round based
    3. build an actual level :P
    4. get some sound in
    5. add a win condition (first to win 3 rounds wins the match im thinking)
    6. maybe some simple bots for testing purposes ';;'
    Thanked by 1cairnswm
  • @Bevis and I started Jamming at 3am. We're pretty hung over but we're having fun!

    image
    Thanked by 1creative630
  • image

    I think we are going to go to sleep now. In fact I'm pretty sure Bevis is already asleep.
  • Cool, I'm giving up. I got down most of what I had envisioned. I submitted to the Jam because I ran overtime. I still wanted to add more polish and sound but I'm too tired right now.

    Play the Unity web player version here.

    Heres my Ludum Dare page where the standalone Linux/Windows/Mac/Source files are.
  • edited
    My Ludum Dare Page
    Web version
    I'm so tired, made a timelapse again, still need to compress it/upload.

    Also went with a space theme survival thing. There's nothing like last minute noob code to introduce bugs.. nice.
    Felt like there was more time, this time round, maybe I pixel really slow though :S Was pretty fun, we had 3 phases planned and managed to finish the first.

    Music adds loads of value. In the silence, the game felt empty add music and it became pretty moody.
    Always a fun experience though :)

  • I didn't get a game out but I got a tech demo of a pinball game working. I learnt a lot about Unity3D physics which I think was valuable.

    What I found weird was how nearly deterministic the physics is. Automatically launching the ball, it would follow the same path about 8 out of 10 times.
  • edited
    Finally got the size down to something more decent. Blender you are amazing :) Here's my timelapse
    Thanked by 2Merrik creative630
  • I do envy you arty gents and your timelapse videos. A timelapse of me working would be watching a whole bunch of text scrolling by, with odd breaks here and there for when Unity crashes/locks up/successfully compiles for a change. It's significantly less exciting to watch.
  • edited
    @creative630 Played a bunch of your game.

    (Hopefully) constructive feedback!

    I really love the start of the game with the world exploding. It conveys very elegantly what a lesser designer may have tried to convey this a wall of text. AND it reminds you every time you restart what the stakes are (which a wall of text wouldn't, even if the player actually read it the first time). I've seen plenty of jam games start with "You are in a space ship and earth has just been destroyed", and you did this premise the best.

    The unconventional control system is hard to use (that the direction is always relative to the mouse facing). I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with the control system, but it's one I'm not used to (nor I think are most people), and I think it does require a bit more work to get used to than standard twin-stick controls. However, once I'd figured out how to circle strafe it got a lot easier.

    I really liked building up an army and fighting back. I managed to get to the point where I had six or so robots following me and we kind of kicked ass together for a while (until they were whittled down). It felt like a fairly tragic end to the human race, especially since it was endless, and my robots were poor pilots (and presumably conversationalists).

    Going forward (assuming you are going to work on this further) things I think I would like:

    It doesn't feel right that the asteroids do no damage to you and (especially) no damage to enemies.

    The system doesn't produce new challenges after you figure out how to kill enemies effectively, and you can't become much more powerful (the robots do damage, but they die quickly and you have to work to maintain their numbers). I'd love for the game to escalate (kind like the way a game like Katamari escalates). What I'd suggest is making the robots be able to pick up health and make more robots.

    I'd like a third act. What I'd suggest is that once your army is big enough you can face off against the enemy planet, and wipe that out (You-Are-The-Monster style). Or something like that, depending on how much work you want to do.

    I'm not that fond of picking up meat to gain health. It feels a bit out of theme.

    Wishlist!

    Other kinds of spaceships! Both friendly and hostile. Maybe if different asteroids gave different resources then different robots could be built.

    Juice! Explosions! Better looking lasers!


    Thanked by 1creative630
  • edited
    Chippit said:
    A timelapse of me working would be watching a whole bunch of text scrolling by, with odd breaks here and there for when Unity crashes/locks up/successfully compiles for a change. It's significantly less exciting to watch.
    You're right, timelapse code is boring! Maybe a video at 3Xspeed with a voice over narrating design decisions or design patterns.
    I'm actually going to try do an animation process video for the next ludum dare so that the video is atleast mildly informative.

    @creative630 I too played your game, this is an account of my experience:
    I found the control scheme really tough and took me a while to figure out what was potting, I think both our games could have benefited from screen space movement. I also felt the curve was pretty steep, after killing a few dudes a bunch more all come at the same time which you then can't outflank, increasing speed could have helped here. Everyone is shooting all the time, which is pretty intense, varied fire rate on the enemies could maybe help with that.
    First time round I didn't realize that you got clone ships for metal which is really rad, they actually what kept me playing more sessions, because I felt like I could actually overcome the horde if I got enough clones, Good Job there!
    I wasn't too fond of the holding in of the mouse button the whole time to shoot, maybe ammo could have been limited so you more conscious of only shooting when it counts or burst fire or something to break possible finger strain. I really liked the beginning explosim too, as the blackship said it sets up the tone for the game very nicely :) I was surprised to not hear any sound or music because you do that really well, why did you decide not to add sound?
    It's pretty rad how much you got done as a one man show in such a short time.
    Thanked by 1creative630
  • edited
    @BlackShipsFilltheSky Thanks so much for the feedback! I appreciate the comments on the start of the game, I was trying to make the start of the game as quick as possible due to the difficulty/twitchy feel of the game.

    I realised a little too late the controls weren't intuitive to most people, but I really like the circle strafe/orbiting left and right movement, so I kept it in.

    I really wanted to have a collect-crew thing like SPAZ, where you could build new ships according to the crew and materials you have amassed. The food/metal was an Im-tired quick compromise (which I hate). The mechanics I got in were the bear minimum I needed to feel comfortable enough to put the game up for other people to see.

    Thanks for the suggestions! If I add to the game then I will definitely keep those in mind :)

    @Pomb Again, thanks for the feedback! As I said above, I definitely should tweak the movement. The difficulty is pretty insane, but when I was playtesting by myself I racked up a huge amount of health (while sacrificing many friends) so I actually thought it was too easy. I realise now I was wrong and that was kindof difficult to pull off, haha!

    I really wanted to add more diagrams to illustrate you could build clones, but I didn't want to clutter the screen in the begining... so I need to think of something else... hmmm

    In terms of sound... Not enough time really. Socializing with extended family and running away every few minutes to code in my spare time kinda took it out of me during the weekend. I was so excited to create some spacey tunes!

    @Pomb Feedback for your game:
    The game is beautiful, really can't critisize the artwork and feel of the aesthetics. More ship parts please! At first I was a little confused cus they looked like badass space worms to me, so I didn't know thats what we should be going for! The sound also really adds to the feel of the game so great job, maybe add some thuds for when you bang into objects?

    The movment was cool once I figured out that I should hold down W for longer periods of time, though the steering was a little too sensitive and hard to control for me.

    Sometimes the grapple gun didn't work, at first I thought you couldn't shoot at all, so I was just running around collecting health not knowing what was going on... Also sometimes the grapple gun broke for me? I couldn't figure out why all the parts where lying around me.

    The background music also sometimes stopped for a little too long. I like building the music up and down, but sometimes it was down a little too long for my tastes.
    [Edit:] I see that there is a mute unmute bug, that explains it!

    Super rad game :)
  • @creative360 Thanks :)
    We totally agree with the controls, number 1 problem is that there was the ability to easily change the feel quickly and neither of us play tested for long enough or fudged with the numbers enough. I would have loved to put sound in for bumping into objects! alas. When we realized we weren't going to be able to make the full planned experience we opted for continuous collection of parts, which in hindsight was the wrong plan. It would have been better just to end the game after a certain amount and given hints into what was going to happen next.
    I Should have totally fixed that mute bug! The other problem is that the audio had like 15 seconds of silence at the end of the track, which I should have again fixed. Just needed to download audacity and cut it out!
    My design motivation for the parts was that they were the same color as the ship and had cut lines running through the, which I think connects them by value, hue and design, but I can totally agree with your space worms comment!!! haha I didn't see them like that but now that I do, I can't unsee it! Personally think that the experience is super shallow and boring, it's a total grind with no reward. Having said that I did learn more about the animation workflow in unity, and how terrible and unfriendly it is, even having a short animation of 5 seconds long is a pain in the ass to re-time because you can't scale all curves or dopesheet keys, major fail, it means for every key you have to go in and drag them closer or further apart, now you have 10 - 20 keys, Ouch, I can go on about some other features being painful to use but will stop here.
    I got what I wanted out of the weekend, which was to make lots of art. I may look at adding in the 2 other acts just to see what happens, but have other learning I plan on doing this holiday! Thanks for playing :)


  • edited
    @creative630 Just a word about difficulty...
    The difficulty is pretty insane, but when I was playtesting by myself I racked up a huge amount of health (while sacrificing many friends) so I actually thought it was too easy.
    Once I'd figured out the controls, and figured out the goals, your game was easy (I could have continued indefinitely). But the game started out very difficult (I got annihilated several times before I knew what was going on).

    In your game it isn't a matter of overall difficulty, but the difficulty curve. A quick way to solve this is that at the start throw just one ship at the player, next throw two ships etc. Unless there is a very good reason, always guarantee players start with a victory before you defeat them (i.e. give them some positive feedback first). This way even players unfamiliar with the genre can figure out what they're meant to be doing (and negative feedback isn't motivating unless players are aware that there is positive feedback to be had).

    Obviously there are a ton of other ways to control the difficulty curve so that players receive challenges that are always challenging.

    @Pomb Finally played your game! It is pruuurty.

    And sounds good.

    The way the character moves is really clever.

    I was confused about the controls for a while. I didn't work out that the mouse controlled anything (there was no indication in game that it was sensitive to the mouse). And the game could have just used space bar instead (because mouse position didn't matter as far as I could tell).

    I liked the tiled universe (or at least the fact that I could loop round). I'm sure you could have expanded on it to give the game a bit of a Twin Peaks feel (because space doesn't normally wrap around like that, and makes me think something weird is happening).

    Pushing the parts into the ship (without grappling them) didn't work (after which I checked the Ludum page for the controls).

    I felt a few more things could affect the oxygen level, like exertion. This might produce a few tactics, like coasting in straight lines, and makes redirection cost. Also, if oxygen is affected by exertion, it means that not doing anything won't hurt the player as much (because oxygen depletion isn't as much about time) and so there won't be a constant feeling of time pressure on the player. Personally I'm not a bit fan of being forced into action, I like to choose when I take action (but I don't know how much of that is personal preference, and how other players will feel).

    The momentum on turning was a bit high for my liking... but it did fit the survival feel. When I was running out of oxygen the added difficulty of turning made the situation far more panicky (which is a good thing).

    I particularly liked that the ship parts were heavier than the player. It happened to me a couple times that pulling a part sent me flying out of control when I tried to change direction. That was an interesting emergent event.

    Things I'd like to see if you take this further:

    A bit better explanation of the goals. Being "Wrecked" is a fairly good indication already of course. But maybe if some of ship parts fell off the ship at the start it would convey that they are meant to be attached. (I am lifting that idea right off of @creative360's game).

    Some benefits/strategy to replacing the parts of the ship. If the parts did things, and were different, it would mean a lot more thinking about which parts to grab.



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