[rant]
If you look at my ratings, every
category has a 1, a 2, 3, 4, and 5 (excluding community, audio). I don’t know if my game is just controversial or what, but it seems silly if the one person who gave me a 5 for graphics (which suck) gave me a 1 in audio (as if it had none, even though it did at the end, and in this case a – would have been just fine). I don’t know the logic behind these ratings, but it’s very silly.
[/rant]

I wrote a little script to scrape all the ratings for all games and put them in a comma separated value file.  You can open this in any spreadsheet app (Excel, OpenOffice Calc, etc.).  It’s here, if anyone’s interested:

http://www.spampudding.com/ratings.csv

I’ve seen some pretty unfair ratings in my 3 LD career, but this is just ridiculous. At least they had the decency to n/a everything and not 1 everything. If you can’t play the game, don’t rate it, even if you just n/a everything, the Coolness meter is to show who made the biggest contribution via vote, this isn’t contributing to anything. Anyways, [/rant].

Cool, came in 5th in a compo that I almost abandoned halfway through due to isometric sorting woes

But looking at the scores in general has reminded me just how much the Humor category needs to be nuked from orbit!

Being hit with a load of 1′s and 2′s in this category (which isn’t relevant to a lot of games) isn’t much fun. It’s obviously not just my games that suffer from this – even Notch’s epic Metagun was given a couple of 1′s in this category, and that was a solid 4-5 game. How about just removing the humor category, if a game would have scored high here, that should add to the ‘fun’ score, shouldn’t it? (Maybe even score Fun out of 10, instead of 5?)

Also, there’s been a bit of what I can only describe as ‘troll scoring’ going on – with solid 4+ games being given 1s and 2s across the board by at least one voter (in a lame attempt to vote down the competition?)

I’d almost suggest filtering out the highest and lowest couple of ratings for each game when calculating the final results?

Discuss…

While 50th overall is definitely a step up from last LD, 16th for audio (for the first game I’ve ever used sound effects in) and equal 6th for innovation (4.04 average!) are amazing results and it’s definitely a victory by my standards. Thanks to everyone who voted!

This has been a great LD for more than the scores, of course. While I have to say there were a number of games that felt too similar, there were also a good number that stood out, and the standard of presentation as a whole was fantastic. The feedback and support from the community throughout has been incredibly encouraging and uplifting, and while the previous LD was a good learning experience this has blown it away.

Work on an improved AS3/Flixel version of Sonic Boom is well underway and hopefully others are developing their games further too – I look forward to seeing them.

Ludum Dare 18 judging has finally ended, and here are your results.

Top 20 Competition Games

You can check out the top 20 competition games here (including ties):

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-18/?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-18/

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

Ludum Dare 18 Jam Games, Compo Games, oh my!

Ludum Dare 18 was our first trial run of the new combined Competition and Jam event. So in addition to the 172 entries created by individuals for competition, there are 41 more games created teams or individuals that decided to take an extra day to polish their game. Be sure to check those out here:

ALL JAM GAMES (41) <--

[ ALL COMPO GAMES (172) | ALL GAMES (213) ]

Overall, the response to the Competition and Jam has been extremely positive. But now that the Ludum Dare 18 has come to a close, we’d like to hear your thoughts.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2010/08/25/did-you-like-the-jam/

* * *

And THAT was Ludum Dare 18

What an incredible event! Thanks everyone for making Ludum Dare 18 such a big deal.

When the smoke cleared, we had a total 213 games across both the Competition and Jam! This is our current “high score”, 10 entries ahead of Ludum Dare 17 in April (203).

During the final theme voting round, we collected nearly 500 votes in a single day! If we’re to take that as the number of participants, that means Ludum Dare 18 had an over 40% completed game rate! Wow!

Theme voting results can be found here.

Press Coverage (Viral Timelapse Videos)

As for other happenings, Ludum Dare made an impressive showing in the gaming press, especially the timelapse video from one Notch. Kotaku, Engadget, Digg; You name it, they covered it. 200,000 Youtube views later…

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2010/08/25/ludum-dare-18-press-coverage/

In addition, IndieGames.com and Bytejacker are back with a quick look at many games from the competition. Go see if you were one of them.

Ludum Dare 18 Meetups

Even though the Ludum Dare competition is a solo event, that doesn’t mean you have to work alone. Here’s a look at some of the gatherings that took place Ludum Dare 18 weekend.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2010/08/17/ludum-dare-jam-live-at-cb2-bistro/
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2010/08/21/ludumzilla-at-cb2-indies/
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2010/08/22/new-england-meetup-video/

If I missed any posts, let me know and I’ll update this list.

Other Ludum Dare 18 related links

- Number of competition entries in the final minutes
- Watch the Keynote, hosted by Mike Kasprzak (PoV)
- View the Theme Voting Results
- The “ALL GAMES” wallpaper by ExciteMike

Interesting Tags: montage, motivation, foodphoto, deskphoto, timelapse

* * *

Ludum Dare 19 coming December 2010

Our Winter event, Ludum Dare 19 will be in December. Date to be finalized as it gets closer.

If you haven’t already, you can sign up for the mailing list, and we’ll keep you informed. Also, you can follow Ludum Dare on Twitter.

Mini-LD #21 “Greatest Fear” this month!

Can’t get enough Ludum Dare? Later this month, tune in for another MiniLD hosted by SophieH (GirlFlash). Details about the upcoming mini can be found here.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2010/09/04/announcing-mini-ludum-dare-21/

Unfamiliar with the Mini-LD? Mini-LD’s are smaller competitions hosted by Ludum Dare veterans. They’re held monthly in the off months between our major competitions. Tune in to the website every month for details on the latest Mini-LD competition. Curious who’s up next? You can check out the host list on the wiki.

Ludum Dare Games at Toronto Exhibit

I was asked by a friend for a list of “art games” from Ludum Dare events (current and past). I gave him a few off the top of my head, but LD is so big now, I could use everyone’s help making a list of Ludum Dare “art games”. For details and to give me your suggestions, see this post.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2010/09/06/ld-art-games-at-exhibit/

Feel free to nominate games you made.

Suggestions

If you have any suggestions for us (website, observations, etc), 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 18 such an incredible success. We’ll see you again in December!

- Mike Kasprzak (PoV)

Hey Everybody!

A friend of mine is organizing an “art game” exhibit in Toronto called “START”. Here are some details:

START

Sept. 13 – 17
8am – 10pm daily
www.thestartshow.com
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=157656320916123

The goal of the event is to promote “art games” created in Toronto and beyond. The plan is to let visitors play a variety of unique games, and let them decide for themselves what is art. This is the first START, and we’re hoping it evolves into a yearly event. START will be held at the Ontario College of Art & Design which is affiliated with The Art Gallery of Ontario.
http://www.ocad.ca
http://www.ago.net

Everything takes place in one very large room, traditionally used to display paintings. In that room we’ll have 5 PC’s projecting games onto the walls for people to play – one projector is HUGE. The room will be impressive. Visitors can drop by anytime (open daily until 10:00pm) including Thursday (the Gala). We’re expecting hundreds of students daily (school will have just resumed), with 2 “gala” nights that will attract an older audience.

Due to budget and time constraints, we will be showing PC indie games only.

I gave him a list of artsy games off the top of my head (with some help from IRC), but LD is so big now, I realize I could be missing some real gems.

So if you know of any Ludum Dare games that meet the criteria of “art game”, ones you created or adore, please nominate them in the comments (one game per post, and give a nod to nominations you agree with). If you can find a link to the competition page, or a blog post here, that would be extremely helpful. Thanks!

I’m very excited for the Mini-LD. As I said in the announcement thread, I will be working with my stuffed fox, Charles Feynman.

He is partly there for moral support and partly for me to bounce ideas off of. (I have some good ideas when I just sit and chat with him. Having someone/something that just sits and listens to you is great for brainstorming.)

I will be facing a fear of mine this LD: I will be making a side-scroller using pixel graphics. I’m terrified of making pixel graphics as I’m rather bad at it. That’s my task here.

It will likely be pretty simple, but it’ll get the job done.

I’m starting out by doing a warmup game using (As I’m doing in the Mini-LD) GIMP for graphics, sfxr for sound, Flex+FlashPunk for code, and I’ll find something for music.

For those who are curious, my warmup game is a side-scrolling hack ‘n slash about a fighter (One of two playable characters) trying to retrieve a Valuable Treasure from a dungeon, fighting goblins and orcs to get to it.

With that, I’m going to get to work!

going to announce date, as well as themes and rules all at once, to make a nice change

• theme: Greatest Fear.
• rule: Collaborate with someone who has never worked on a game before.

you don’t *have* to work with someone else, it’s optional, but encouraged. and collaboration can be of any level, as long as someone (or thing, I won’t discriminate against pets, zoo animals or alien encounters of the game kind) contributes something, be it level design, a doodle on paper you scan and use as a sprite, photos of them for character frames, or writes the dialogue, or voice acts… whatever.

and due to the nature of this rule, these contributions can be made at any time, before, during, or after the weekend of the mini (and I’m super lenient with time anyway, so feel free to take your own 48 hour-ish chunk out of September as you please for putting it all together, the weekend date is mostly so if you want to work alongside others its then).

• the start date: 3am GMT/UTC 25th September.
• end date (not strict): 3am GMT/UTC 27th September.

[ Submit Here | View All Submissions ]

but like I say, its loose so do whatever suits you.

also judging entries; I know some people like to have minis with a round of judging, I wont be having that, and it’s not up for discussion.

also also, it’s my hope that people will explore what their real greatest fear is through the games they make during this mini, but you are welcome to interpret the theme how you like, or disregard it all-together.

any questions about the rules or anything just comment on this post, but as a general rule anything you want to do, I’m cool with

Heya, just posted my game on GameJolt!
here’s the link:

http://gamejolt.com/open-source/games/arcade/afterdark/3418/

It’s the post-compo edition.

On another note, good luck to everyone with the results!

Looking for more compo fun?

Here’s a really cool contest: You have seven days out of the month of September to build a game that is “NEVERENDING”. Can you build a game that is infinitely playable, and always crowd pleasing? For more info, check out The Experimental Gameplay Project

If you are a demoscener or love javascript html5 canvas stuff, there’s a nifty “elite” coder style compo called JS1k, where you have 1024 bytes total for your game. Entries are due in one week. Some of the demos totally blew me away – there’s even a Zelda clone!

Finally, if you are a serious contender and can afford the $100 entrance fee, you can compete for $100,000 in the Indie Game Challenge.

I’m always on the lookout for new fun compos, so if you know of any more, please post a comment and let me know. Thanks LDers!

So yeah, I finished a post-compo version of my jam thing. I’m quite happy with it, but beware, it’s really REALLY hard.

BWOOP
download

== CONTROLS == (These are explained in-game, too)
Arrow keys = move
S = jump and confirm
D = pick up and throw
D + Down = put down
D + up = throw upwards
R = restart
Esc = Quit
Note that the speed of thrown objects changes depending on your own momentum while throwing. That is, throwing stuff while walking makes them fly farther.

I’ve been tinkering with my LD 18 game over the past week and a half. The main things I’ve added are online leaderboards, background graphics and better in game help.

It seemed like the main problems with my game were confusion over how to play, very bare gameplay unrelated to the ‘story’ mentioned in the readme and misunderstandings over the goals. There are now several pages of in game help explaining the mechanics, with pictures, that will hopefully clear up how the vacuum mechanic works. I’ve added some nice tile mapped backgrounds and an intro ‘cutscene’ which should indicate that you have to defend the area beyond the left of the screen. Finally, it’s basically a score based endurance game so the leaderboard should emphasise that part of it.

Astrovax also turned out quite addictive, hopefully the leaderboard will make it more so. >:D

The new version can be found at astrovax.moop.org.uk.