Will be happening the weekend of the 22nd.

No hard and fast rules, you can take as much time as you need, use whatever code you want.

Stay stewed.

Several of the top winners of the competition used a game development tool such as Game Maker or Multimedia Fusion 2.

What brought these games over the top seemingly is a scope and size that is difficult to match with just frameworks and APIs.

Cat Planet I think has something like 100 levels. With a level designer built into Game Maker, the programmer can be developing levels within a few hours of the competition. I remember when building the level editor was part of the challenge. It is just really difficult to compete with a fully integrated set of tools that make it easy to create a game in a couple hours.

Apocalypse Adventure is absolutely enormous and doesn’t seem like a 48 hour game at all. To build something like this, you almost have to be building the world from the first moment of the competition, which evidently is possible in Multimedia Fusion 2.

I think it’s clear these all in one tools with sprite editors, animators, level designers, and event based drag and drop development environments, etc, give a big advantage to those who use them in these competitions.

I’m just wondering for fairness sake, and to continue to promote a diversity of languages, frameworks, and more interesting types of games than these tools usually allow being built, should we consider banning such all-in-one game development tools?

The list of which I would consider: Game Maker, Multimedia Fusion 2, Construct, Unity, and perhaps the UDK.

I’m not connected with Ludum Dare in any way other than that I enjoy entering the contests, but I just was wondering what everyone’s opinion on this was, as I’ve noticed a big difference in the scope and size of games developed with tools such as Game Maker and those that are not.

And I’m definitely not saying I’d like to go back to a “all from scratch” contest either, hehe.

The game I submitted to the contest (http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-16/?action=preview&uid=28) wasn’t a game in the sense that you could like.. do anything. Objectives? nah. Plot? nah. What I did was essentially a tech demo- flash space exploration mmo. except more than a couple people turned my crappy vps into a flaming heap, but theoretically it was an mmo . Well, anyone that likes the idea of a cross between Elite and Eve Online, I’m continuing work on it and just finished a large rewrite of the backend:

I am currently aiming at getting something more playable in for TIGSource’s Assemblee contest by the 10th (all the art/music I’m using is generated earlier from their users). I just finished a full rewrite so that everything runs of Python/Django on Google AppEngine . Added bonus- game accounts can attach to google authentication

Play at http://play.drifting.thegup.com

Currently the appengine framework is pretty much complete with datastore models for players,stars,planets,civilizations and npcs. I’m still tweaking the galaxy generation process but will be moving on to solar systems soon, along with multiplayer chat and pilot profiles, and some more ui options .

The game plan is to make it into kind of a multiplayer Elite – civilizations are generated along with the galaxies including homeworlds, npc ships and npc space stations you can interact with. You represent whatever civilization you choose and can later switch civs based on a reputation system. War against other civs and plunder, go freelance pirate, or do missions they give. There will be a limited resource you can use to claim new planets in the name of your civilization and either set up defenses or mining bases.
Each sector will be generated when a neighboring sector is first discovered.. ie a player enters sector 10,10 – the 3 neighboring sectors that haven’t been generated would then be created. There will be randomly placed wormholes or warp gates as well to connect to either other solar systems in the same sector or other sectors, to make exploring less linear.
Eventually I want to make planets explorable as well. They will be procedurally generated with a unique seed combined with the physical traits described by the ACRETE algorithm when generating them. I was looking at Away3D for making planet exploration a separate flash app

Congratulations to everyone who entered LD, there were some great and amusing entries

After an extended holiday, Ludum Dare 16 voting has finally ended.

Top 20

It was the top 10 last time, but we get so many entries now it should really be more. So hit this link for the easy answer, “who won LD16″?

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-16/?action=top

Winners are decided by the Overall category. To see the complete list, hit the “Show All Entries” link at the bottom.

Categorical Top 5′s

Here at Ludum Dare, being the best game isn’t the only way to win. Games are rated in 7 additional categories, with a special “Coolness” category highlighting people that went above and beyond to be sure you got a vote.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-16/

*NOTE*: You can click on the titles of the categories for Top 20 style lists per category.

Ludum Dare 16 as Screen Shots

And since it looks cool, you can see screenshots for the full list of 121 entries here:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-16/?action=preview

And that was 2009

What an incredible year for Ludum Dare. 123 entries in April, 144 in August, and 121 in December to close out our biggest year yet. That’s 388 entries, and that’s not even counting all the MiniLD’s!

I’m working on a little write up that’s hopefully ready soon, a retrospective or postmortem for Ludum Dare in 2009. Stay tuned for that.

Next Time

Our next major competition (Ludum Dare 17) will be in April. The exact date we’ll know as the month approaches. To keep informed of the latest news, you can sign up for our mailing list here:

http://www.gamecompo.com/mailing-list/

You can also follow us on Twitter:

http://twitter.com/ludumdare

Or alternatively, you can watch user news’s RSS feed.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/author/news/feed/

Can’t get enough? Then stop by next month for MiniLD #15 hosted by DestroySound. Stop by the channel DS, we’d love to hear from you.

Catch Mike and Phil at GDC in March

Phil and I seem to be permanent members of the GDC crowd now, so keep an eye out for us at the show.

Also, check in before the show here at LudumDare.com. There’s talk of an LD meetup and other fun things. We’ll know more as the date approaches.

Phil will be giving a talk at the iPhone Games Summit on multiplayer and Galcon. Feel free to stop by and give him your support.

https://www.cmpevents.com/GD10/a.asp?option=G&V=3&id=648584

Either that, or park yourself in a not so comfy chair for the Indie Games Summit. If you happen to be in San Fran, you don’t want to miss this!

Suggestions

If you have any suggestions for the compo, we continue to collect them in the comments here:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2009/08/30/suggestion-post/

Thanks everyone for coming out and making Ludum Dare in 2009 such an incredible success.

- Mike Kasprzak (PoV)

Thanks again for all your comments. Here is my response to them.

SonnyBone says …

THIS GAME IS SO HARD!
I like the concept, but it could stand to be more forgiving. Falling from the very top is a saddening experience.

If I ever get around to making my post compo I will be adding a feature to take you to checkpoints.

philomory says …

The game is pretty fun in it’s way, but the controls feel extremely awkward. I did love the music, though.

Thanks, I find that most people liked the music in the game. Of the 5 hours I spent making the game I only spent 20 minutes on it making music. I was surprised by this.

Covenant says …

Couldn’t run it, got a “Unexpected error running game.”

I apologize. As to why it didn’t load I don’t know.

TenjouUtena says …

Audio is kickin’ here. Everything else is kind of meh. It’s a good complete game. The music is awesome, though.

I like the idea of ‘non’ platforms, but I had too hard of a time progressing!

Thanks. I was going to add a sparkily sound effect for bouncing on stars but did not find the time.

Hempuli says …

It was addicting! I enjoyed the first level totally.

My original plan was was to only have 1 level and have it go about 3 times higher into the skies. with checkpoints. having a easy medium and hard mode difficulty based on how many checkpoints you would get. However, Once my player got so high on the screen, gravity reversed! Since I never fixed this bug, instead I made 3 small levels 2 of which were done at last minute. The first one was the start of my original course.

Zecks says …

the game’s so quirky it owns

My personality is quirky so it figures that bleed through my game. Thanks Zecks, you made me smile when I read that.

localcoder says …

Wow, too hard for me. The first row of blue stars is tough, and it just gets tougher. I got up to the orange sky.

It’s nice to stand on stars instead of collecting them for a change.

I’m glad you liked standing on stars, or bouncing on them in this case.

ippa says …

slightly too hard.. I think you suck gamers in better if it’s easy in the beginning and they can feel skilled . Cool concept, of all the ratings the highest went to Innovation.

I agree with you completely here. First level is much tougher than the 2 following it. This was a bad move on my part. Next time I enter I will keep this in mind. I don’t feel too bad though, this being my first ludum dare.

sirGustav says …

that is one irritating tune

I  felt bad because I didn’t add an option to turn off the music. Next time I enter there will be a off/on switch for music for those who don’t enjoy the quirky music I do.

Bonjour!

Play these, they need more votes.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/1447 (I uploaded a working version of this)
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/728
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/43 (requires browser plugin)
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/507 (python source) ***

So when Christmas came around I got my usual cool Gifts, but one particularly stuck out. Mainly because it matched my entry for Ludum Dare. I got a blanket that had moons and stars flooded all across it which is much like my game shoot for the stars.

Christmas Suprise

Alas, Coincidences like this are my life and I love them.

Now that I think about it, I actually messed around with the source after the compo – the aliens were commented out in preparation for improvements to the strategy side of the gameplay. It shouldn’t be too hard to uncomment the relevant lines.

My compo page with the download link

dertom says …
Hehe,…nice nice! I really was a big fan of the old c64-textadventure of “The Hobbit”. Would be cool, if you had this effects were the pictures are drawn “realtime” and “real slow” But the graphics brought me back to that time…
Good job

I’m glad the game had some nostalgic value for you! The graphics were more of a last-minute thing, so I didn’t develop them that much.

SonnyBone says …
Was that a Joker reference in a text adventure game?
I THINK IT WAS!
I enjoyed the twists and turns here, but some of the text was hard to follow as it jumped up the page after a command.

I expirimented with different ways to pop the text up, and this way seemed best, though it does have its imperfections. During the 48 hours I wanted to make a game with an impressive gameplay, so I lost focus on making the text presentable.

C418 says …
Hm, I think it’s okay. I’m not a real sucker for text adventures. I don’t think I’ll rate it as I didn’t play far.

‘Okay’ is still a good thing to hear!

Cosr says …
That was very amusingly written. Takes maybe a few to many tries to find everything when searching.

Yea, I probably should’ve made necessary items come up more frequently.

Hamumu says …
I couldn’t get past the priest… I even went all the way back to see if the servant would give me what he needed, but either no, or I couldn’t word it right (actually yes, but it doesn’t count). I have to say that even once I understood the concept of how it would make you press enter and that the yellow line indicated it was actually command time, I still CONSTANTLY was typing ignored commands to my endless frustration. Some text adventure conventions would’ve been very nice, like the prompt meaning you can type things, and I for inventory, and the NESW movement. Nice artwork behind the text!

Yea, I might have fixed that had I adequate time to give some thought to this. It annoyed me too, but I was so concentrated on bugfinding that it slipped my mind to fix that. As for the priest, if you got the dagger and the King fell out the window, you can find the necessary item by searching in the loud room.

Hempuli says …
I can guess that it’s hard to make a proper parser-based text adventure in 48 hours!

You bet it was

ippa says …
first about your comment: the area you got stuck in was about the only red herring I had in the game, it’s not very hard to jump out of though. Give it another shot, go to the right in the beginning and find the way out from there, it will take 3 minutes of your life and I’ll promise to put a smile on your face in the end .
Onto your game: I liked the pixely gfx, the whole setup reminded me of early kings quest but without the animated character. I haven’t played many text-based games, and that might be the reason I didn’t get very far. I tried asking the servant for various things, a key and crown being the first ones .. but he didn’t seem to understand anything I said. I would love some tips there, is it “give me the key”, “get key” or just “key” or any other combination.. nothing seemed to work. While the gfx was nice I got really hard to read on certain backgrounds, maybe putting it in a black box at the bottom would have helped with that. Or even better, in a full-length black box at the right side.
I really wished I could have gotten further on this one since it seemed like you put some serious work into it.

The servant is actually there just for kicks, sort of meant to be a little bonus. No, you can’t actually get anything from her except some backstory. (Ask her about dragons, the king, the queen, who you are, etc.) In order to find items to progress with the game, you’ll need to search for them in a couple of places. Hint: the copper key can be found in the loud room.

I got a lot of positive feedback on this game! Thanks for the comments guys, and I hope you enjoyed playing it as much as I did making it