Reddit
Ludum Dare 19 Theme Voting
Posted by news (twitter: @ludumdare)
December 11th, 2010 6:20 pm
Theme voting has begun! Tune in every day this week (Sunday to Friday) for a new set of themes. The highest scoring themes from the first 5 days will be voted on for the 6th and final day (roughly 20 themes). The winning theme will be revealed at the start.
Special thanks to Pekuja and Deepflame for doing the majority of the pruning.
Useful links: LD Gathering Discussion
I am excited. :3
Ditto, my man. Ditto.
did you guys know digging is almost as cool as fishing?
true story.
I thought digging was cooler. Weird.
Anyway, inversion++!
this from a guy who made a fishing minigame almost as bad as WoW’s one? (with only one type of fish!)
try harder
I tried making it as interesting as I could! There are particles!
clearly not enough particles!
(spoiler: you can never have enough particles)
So you going to make a fishing game with infinte particles and show us all how it’s done?
My plan for discovery is just to clone Minecraft but with hookers and blackjack.
Notch, Fishing in MC somehoe IS interesting for me. Am I a freak now? ó_Ò
No Zombie option, or EVOLUTION option in an LD Theme Poll? WHAT IS THIS MADNESS??????!!!!!!
brandonman: chilllllll
Also, pay attention in class!
“Tune in every day this week (Sunday to Friday) for a BRAND-SPANKING new set of themes.”
madness? THIS IS SPARTA!!!
No,wait..
Zombies??!!?!?!?!?
Tomorrow.
Silly themes are on Round 3…
Zombies are serious business
And yet IT WAS THERE
Are the results for round 1 up, or did I miss something?
I always give the first round(s) a little longer, for those that miss it.
Last LD48, I only got the chance to vote in the final round and never hit just ’0′ rather than 1 or -1. Does that do anything?
Zero works the same as not voting, but it will count as voted. All I mean by that is if you don’t vote, we don’t know that you didn’t vote. If you choose zero, we do.
We all know “boy meets girl, they fight crime, they find a talking pie” will win! Is there a single better theme? I think not!
You got me on the talking pie.
this.
I agree, best theme EVER. +1billion.
When you really think about it, in all seriousness, this would actually make a great theme.
In all seriousness, it would result in 200 games with all-but-identical plots.
In no seriousness, it would be an awesome theme.
exactly, so you’d have to do something awesome to make your game’s story stand out.
No dinosaurs?
Apparently, you hate FUN!
I can’t wait for round 3! That’s where the gold is. (And the end of the “No X? ARGHWHYDIDYOUDOTHATTOUS!!!” complaints
)
Snow! simple and openended
plus it’s like f’n freezing outside right now.. it’s all i can think about
Escape to the tropics with me.
I really really hope one of the joke themes win. They are awesome.
Pigmen shall win!
Yeah, there are many themes I want to try in the “silly themes” round compared to the others. :]
If “Enemas as weapons” is chosen I’m not entering
Some of the silly ones are great though; “Title of your game must be a Year” holds a lot of possibilities (though it’d be easy to cheat and glue a year title on some old game). “Get to da choppah!” would be great fun too.
Digging, Fishing and Enemas as Weapons would make an amazing combination.
I vote for “Digging, Fishing and Get to da enemah!”
Aww, redundancy and redundancy didn’t make the silly list? D:
Redundancy made one of the serious lists (twice)
I would love to try “Text Input in an Action Game”. Would be nice to see how people try to combine those things together
Actually, that would be a godawful nightmare to figure out that would result in heaps of mediocre games.
Challenge isn’t always fun. Sometimes it’s just frustrating and gets in the way.
So, I take it no one here’s ever heard of/played “Typing of the Dead” for Arcade/Dreamcast/Windows/PS2? (Note: that’s why I down-voted it, lol)
Wow, some of the joke themes seem alot more intruiguing than the normal ones. Is that wierd?
Nope, I think they’re more open to interpretation and more fun!
Really, we should just throw out all but Round 3. That would be real fun and though I’m pretty busy, I would find it hard not to join in the game making.
Agreed. I wish I had an LD Silly Theme generator; I’ve had more cool game ideas the past few days than a year before that!
I wish there was a button to make voting easier. A [-1 to all except zombies please] button. k, ta, thanks
Zombie games are the new zombies. They are dumb, they have no brains, there is an endless horde of them, and they all need to be killed for humanity to survive.
I would just vote -1 to anything with zombies in it. Level up already.
But now I kind of want “Zombie Games” as a theme.
Quick note: Looks like “Seasons” appears both in Round 3 and Round 4, albeit in slightly different forms. Dunno if that’s intentional or not.
Ah, I didn’t notice. Just be sure to vote oregano and it’ll all work out.
I’ve been voting oregano since I was old enough to vote.
Zombies for the win! (You can tell I’ve played too much Black Ops Zombies…)
( I… couldn’t. There are too many zombie games already for me to even know that Blops Zombies exists, let alone then guess you were driven to a mad zombie-lust by it as opposed to one of the many other zombie-themed games, or perhaps even a zombie movie, or a zombie book, or (and this is a big one) ‘zombie fandom’ in general — which exists, I guarantee you; just search ‘zombies’ on facebook and you will find a veritable army of zombie zombies. )
Wow. We really hate contraception around here.
As for this round, I want “being lost”, “heist”, “space”, and “universe”.
“I have no idea where I am, but this is a stick-up! Gimme all the money in this space-bank!”
“My God, it’s full of money!”
win.
I’m thinking the Great Wormhole Heist from one of Peter Hamilton’s novels.
Ugh. I was tired of zombies before Left for Dead 1 came out. I guess for containment I could do some sort of Balance of Power dealio.
Who actually comes up with these themes? most of them seem to be in there to intentionally fail.
Anyone who wants can submit them. For the past few weeks there has been a link at the top to a wiki page where you can add them.
Hmm. I came in too late to submit themes. I think I have some nice theme ideas, especially for the silly themes category
.
Go redundancy!
yes this!
I upvoted one and downvoted the other.
I hope the second one wins .
Me too!
Me too!
That’s not very redundant, buddy!
Go redundancy!!
yes this!
I downvoted one and upvoted the other.
Me too!
That’s not very redundant, buddy!
I hope the second one wins.
What does it say about me that none of the themes really stood out to me?
None of them really catch my interest.
Am I getting… Cynical?
(Or maybe just really picky)
Ah well! I’m not really pulling for any one of them at this point. Most could lead to some ideas, but lots of them would like to lots of the same ideas.
At this point, I’ll just vote and hope for the best.
Here’s hoping for a landslide victory for Kittens.
I’m.. Wanting to be cynical. But I can’t. I can’t be grouchy when there are kittens.
Dammit, man! I was having a perfectly good bad mood until you came along and inadvertently cheered me up!
Thanks, now I’m going to be happy for THE REST OF THE DAY!!
I hope you’re happy that I’m happy.
And yes, here’s hoping that Kittens wins.
WHAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! “Boy meets girl,they fight crime, Talking pie” DIDN’T WIN!!!!!!!!
What is this madness!
That’s correct. It didn’t win.
It’s an extremely narrow theme and doesn’t lend itself to a variety of unique games.
Some of us want to have fun *after* the voting is over.
Meh, it’s a decade-old Simpsons reference smashed together with – for the umpteenth time in indie games – zombies
I’d really rather not wade through 200 people beating the same joke to death.
I hope some people work it into their games somehow, though. I wanna see Giga Pudding and enemas sprinkled throughout!
I… Don’t watch The Simpsons, so I’m not sure where the reference is.
It started with the theme “Boy meets Girl”, then I added “Boy Meets Girl, They Fight Crime!”, and others took it from there.
Again, I don’t really know where the Simpsons reference comes in, but it looked to me (Reading the pre-pruning theme suggestion list) that it was just a cascade of adding bits to it.
That’s how it came about to the best of my knowledge.
Okay though, but however question. Why are rounds 4 AND 5 up for voting? At the same time?
Does it make you nervous?
I like letting the rounds overlap a bit, so people that come late can still get a vote in. That’s also why round 5 started early.
There will be only 1 day of final theme voting.
Ooh. Okay. It’s just that I thought winners of round 1 made it to round 2, and then it went on yadda to yadda from that. This is only my third ludum dare so I wasn’t sure.
Whoah, how come everyone is voting for almost the exact opposite themes as I am? When I vote, I look for something that I could really be creative with, but not too hard to think up ideas for. I like intriguing concepts (like “inverse”) better than general themes (like “wheather”). What things do you guys look for?
How quickly can I wrap a minimilist platformer around this thing and do I know enough about it to have it make sense is what I sort of look for. The other part is ‘I think i can squeeze a game out of that’.
Actually, “boy meets girl, they fight crime” had a lot of potential, and I’m sorry to see it not make the cut. I had some vague idea of a Disgaea clone with the two main characters being the guy (who is kind of squeamish around technology, but can connect with the spirit world and summons ghost allies and whatnot) and the girl (who’s a total skeptic about all things metaphysical, but can McGyver robot allies together from pretty much anything).
That said, a game like that probably takes more than 48 hours to do it justice.
Noooooo, pigman is out.
What about us curmudgeons who want themes that are interesting because of the ideas that come from them, and not the fact that they’re funny?
We’re pretty happy, I’ll tell you that much. (Well, most of us, anyway)
I see your point, most certainly. I would prefer an idea that immediately inspires a whole wealth of ideas and such, like the ones of many LDs past. However, I think it only requires a little imagination to see that almost any theme could bring forth great and diverse game ideas, you just might need to try a bit harder with some. Or to put it another way, it’s true that some themes give ideas more easily than others, but I’d never go as far as to blame a lack of ideas on the theme that gets picked.
Actually, ‘pigman’ had potental:
- A game about uncovering corrupt cops
- A game featuring a were-boar as a boss
- A dating game where a snout-nosed guy finds love (Porco Rosso meets Harvest Moon)
In short, some silly themes may actually be as fertle or even better for churning out ideas than ‘real’ ones.
Or you happen upon the lost remnants of the pigman world and explore them to the depths as you descend while trying not to die and containing your excitement but your not fooling your kitten and then you discover something embarrassing and unexpected and then you have to get to the chopper really quickly so you use time travel.
*flees*
This is the first Ludum Dare that I have ever attempted. One quick thing I hope someone can clear up for me. Does MUSIC also have to be create by yourself?
Thanks!
-Elmernite
Yup, all music and/or sound effects must be your own creation. If you want music but you’re not up to composing, there’s always http://tones.wolfram.com/generate/ (I think some people used this last time). And for sfx, there’s http://www.drpetter.se/project_sfxr.html (though I prefer the version here http://www.superflashbros.net/as3sfxr/ since there’s nothing to download, and it has Undo).
Yes. But you are not required to have music.
You may use pre-made samples in the building of your music (like drums or something) since it would be impractical to require you to sample everything from scratch. But these should be simple instruments.
Sound FX must be created from scratch, but using a soft-synth (like SFXR) is allowed. Or recording yourself making noises is a popular and effective option.
Thanks for the quick and helpful response.
-Elmernite
If the first Redundancy wins, I’m assuming the theme will actually be based on the second Redundancy?
It looks like both went into the same total…. so it had twice the votes of any other (edutainment still lost to it though, haha).
Also, round 5 ended while I was voting, wonder if my votes counted….
This is criminal! I was totally in favour of the second redundancy but not the first, and now their results appear to have merged together. Possibly one of them could have been the most popular theme!
And yet, Edutainment was still the bigger loser.
This is going to be so much FUN. So many wonderful themes this time.
My favourites were the joke themes and themes that were verbs. I came up with a game idea for each and every theme in seconds. No matter what is chosen, if you are a creative person you should not allow a theme you don’t like to get in the way of having fun and creating an original and fun game.
If you don’t like the theme that wins, please don’t complain about it.
Just use your imagination! The possibilities are endless! =)
Why was it changed from ‘Title of game must be a year’ to ‘Game based on a year’? the former was much better.
200 games called 1984. I figure I’d give it a better chance by broadening it’s use.
The problem is, it’s a different proposition. In my, and perhaps other’s estimation, the fun wasn’t so much in basing a game on a year, but in seeing what different people would make of games which had the restriction of having the title as a year. But I suppose it’s a subjective thing.
I’d have named my game “1504″ and set it in the distant future just to be defiant. Alternatively, a fantasy/medieval game titled “2149″.
I would have named my game “a year”.
I knew I wouldn’t be the only one to think of that.
Should have known I wouldn’t have been doing something original with that.
100th!
Aww, my “Enemas as weapons” didn’t make it to the finals.
If “Text Input Action Game” wins, I’m out. >:(
Consider that a +1 for Text Input Action Game from me then!
But seriously don’t bow out, I’m sure you could use the “WASD keys are text input” loophole…
:O Why did I get all 1s in Theme? You have to spell DA WAD WAS SAD to win.
All of these themes seem to ‘open ended’ or to vague. Which wouldn’t really make them challenging.
Say if you had set out to make ‘generic side scrolling shooter/slasher’. You could easily interpret all of the final round themes to fit into that game with almost no changes.
Aftermath – change the back gorund to grim looking wasteland.
Being lost – same game, your just not told where you are/why your there at the start.
Containment – all the enemys are infected with generic virus, so you have to kill them (same game)
Created but never destroyed – main character is a super soldier, and cant die (just regenerates health or some bs)
Demolition – no change needed. (super generic name)
Depth – you under ground or under water but its still the same game.
Digging – main character is a miner escapeing a mine with infected workers or some such.
Discovery – you discover stuff as you blast your way along (no real change)
Don’t die – your not meant to die (super generic name)
Elements – the backgorund/foreground weather changes from raining/sunny etc (makes minor changes in gmaeplay)
Energy – you pick up simple ‘power ups’ as you scroll along (same could be said for elements)
Evolution – same as above, you kill enemys and they cause you to evolve (power-ups, speed/strength)
Game based on a year – if the game is a grim future waste land, just call it 2142
Sacrifice – you die at the end to save mankind (the whole game up to that point would be the same)
Seeds – whenever generic enemy dies, he/she drops ‘seeds’ that cause trees to grow in the fore/background. (the mission is to grow trees to save the world or some BS… but its still that same side scrolling game)
Text Input Action Game – every so often you have to type “open door” or “reload” etc…
That was unexpected – game ends at arbitrary point with a unrelated picture on the screen (probably an unpleasant one)
The Unknown – Same as ‘Being lost’
Time travel – every so often you pass through a “time portal” and the backgorund/forground
Vulnerability – your vulnerability changes as you pass through different sections of game makeing them more dangerous.
end cynical rant–
Being “Challenging” isn’t necessarily the goal either. If you’re looking to just make a straight-up platformer, then you’re right: most themes can be used as exactly that, themes. But if you gut the run-and-jump, most themes can be reinterpreted in interesting ways.
- An Aftermath game could have something to do with comparing scene A against scene B (the aftermath).
- Being lost could encourage unique use of mazes.
- Containment is certainly the “more than zombies” zombies theme, but could be thought of like a box containing things (grocery store bagger).
- Created but never destroyed, you build/place something to solve problems, but those things you placed become the new problems (frog, snake, bigger mammal).
- Demolition, make it and break it, or just break it.
And so on.
Whether or not you choose to interpret the theme in such a rigid way is up to you, but you will lose votes, especially in the theme category, for doing so.
It is a capital mistake to design before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist themes to suit ideas, instead of ideas to suit themes.
If the theme is the action game in text or whatever and I can’t find some creative way to make something totally different and still consider it following the theme, I’m going to scream. After spending months on an flexible and vastly featured ASCII graphics engine if all I use it for is a simple text adventure/action game, I will not be pleased.
VOTE IT DOWN
If the theme is “Text Input in an Action Game”, I’ll probably just enter the jam and do something completely unrelated.
VOTE THAT $@%# DOWN.
Yep, that’s totally an option now (the Jam part, not the down-voting).
Hey everyone.
This will be my first LD. Hope that it all goes well and I’m looking forward to playing everyone’s games.
Yay, totally in for the playing part, too. Prepare to be criticized!
The suspense is killing me! Roll on 2am!
Likewise. I want to dream in ideas tonight.
apple ipad future…
Please, can you PM me and tell me few more thinks about this, I am really fan of your bloggets solved properly asap….
website…
[...]Ludum Dare » Blog Archive » Ludum Dare 19 Theme Voting[...]…