This tutorial focuses mainly on Garageband users, so forgive me if some of the terms are incorrect for different programs.

Software

• You don’t need costly software to write music, some of the most default programs can do the job.
• Garageband is recommended for Mac users.
• A good alternative is Noteflight.com, which can write music the… professional… way. You can save it to a wav. file.

WARNING TO GARAGEBAND USERS – DO NOT USE MUSICAL TYPING FOR RECORDING, use the SCORE EDITOR
A – Region Name field: Type a new name for the selected region in the field.

B – Region Pitch slider and field: Drag the slider to transpose the selected Software Instrument region up or down by up to 36 semitones.
You can also type the number of semitones in the field.

C – Velocity slider and field: Drag the slider to change the velocity of selected notes.
You can also type the velocity value in the field.
A note’s velocity reflects how hard the key is pressed when you play the note.

D – Zoom slider: Drag to zoom in for a closer view or to zoom out to see more of the track.

E – Graphic/Notation View buttons: Click to change the editor to graphic view or notation view.

F – Note Value button: Click to choose the note value for notes you add.

G – Fix Timing button: Click to fix the timing of notes in the selected region, or notes selected in the editor, so that notes move to the nearest grid position.

H – Beat ruler: Shows beats and measures for the area visible in the editor.

I – Playhead: Shows the point in the project currently playing.

J – Notation display: Shows the musical events of Software Instrument regions in standard music notation.
You can move notes to adjust their pitch and where they start playing, and change how long they play.

K – Scroll bar: Drag the scroller to move to a different part of a track.

Chord Progression

• To start off writing your piece, you need a good chord progression.
• Pick a tune you think can be repeated for the entire song.
• If stuck, choose four whole notes that descend or ascend.
• Place the rest of notes in the chord.
• Try placing a note that’s two steps away to complete the chord.

Adding Other Instruments

• If you want your song to slowly gain instruments over time:

1. pick a short tune that can be played to the measures of your chosen chord progression.
2. One by one, add the instruments with their short tunes until the climax of the song.
3. This is where the lead comes in.

• If not, add all the instruments at once at the beginning of the song.
• There should be only one or two instruments playing the lead in a simple song.

Writing The Lead

• The lead should have its own instrument(s).
• Pick a tune that fits the chord.
• The lead will not have a repeatable tune.

Increasing your song’s intensity with EQ

• In Garageband, you can edit the instrument’s EQ levels under “Edit Instrument”.
• EQ levels are the different frequencies of normal sound.
• Each instrument should have a different EQ frequency.
• Bass instruments should have a higher base and lower treble.
• Lead instruments should have a higher treble and lower bass.
• Feel free to mix these last two up for variation.
• An example of the lead instrument’s EQ
• Notice how the lead instrument’s EQ is not that extreme. For background instruments, extreme EQ can be a good thing.

Variations

• Note that all songs don’t follow the same pattern, this is just one way of writing a song.
• To make your song sound different or catchy, think of it like making a movie, or a level.
• Introduce the background instruments first, then show the listener your lead instrument.
• During a change from loud to soft in music, have a common tune play before the change.
• If it happens several times, the audience knows that whenever you play that tune, the sound level will drop.
• Let the audience expect what is going to happen next, so that it becomes catchy.

Obviously I didn’t go into the more advanced note placement tips, or note timing instructions, but this is just a general tutorial.

Good luck writing music in the future, and hope to see more music in Ludum Dare games!

If you want to see an example of a Garageband project, see my Isolated Assault Piece (from Ludum Dare 22).

And if you crack open the Isolated Assault Source Files, you can see the same song under Assets/Sound/LD22Track.mp3

One final note: You learn best from experience, so out there and make a song!

While Isolated Assault was huge success in my eyes considering it was my first Ludum Dare game, and by the scores it received, I’m struggling to come up with a Post-Compo version. You see, I’m just not feeling the motivation to work on it. Every time I sit down, I just feel, “Wow, this is old.” It’s like one of those projects I just gave up because I had no motivation for it.

That’s how it went with Dunnet (My most worked on game), and with my First Person Shooter (My first professional game), and with all those projects I started but never got around to.

Currently my Unity Project Folder looks like this:

Where “Abandoned” have been worked on for a while. I could always go back to the “Abandoned,” but I haven’t, and why should I?

My Problem:

I need a due date on projects.

Some people can never get work done knowing there’s time management involved. For me, it’s the other way. Knowing that there’s no time to procrastinate, and that there’s a reward for finished, I can get a lot of good things done.

I also have problems focusing on one idea and getting it implemented quickly. All of focused ideas I have are too complicated even for top-notch game companies.

Therefore, Ludum Dare was perfect for me–it gave a theme for the game and a deadline. I now know my best work will probably come from future LDs.

Will there ever be an Isolated Assault 2?

Not now. And probably not from me. Anyone familiar with Unity (That means you, reader!) can take my Isolated Assault Source files, and add some new levels, as long as I receive credit.

I have no motivation whatsoever to make an Isolated Assault 2. All my ideas were expressed in the first one. You are a guy. That fights cubes. That wears glasses. The only thing added to this game would be gloss.

Will you participate in LD 23?

Of course! Ludum Dare is the best way to manage time and get good games squeezed out!

Will you stop asking yourself random questions?

Never!!!!

Now I ask you, do I stick with deadlines for making games, or do I learn to get around them?

Do I use Ludum Dare to create all my of my work?

For some reason, I need some sort of reward/time limit for everything I make, because that’s just how I work.

Either way, I’ll obviously still be doing LDs, and I can’t wait for LD23!

• Works in Firefox
• Maps support multiple layers
• Data can be loaded as layers into an existing map

map editor 0.4 beta

EDIT: link is http://www.callidusrex.com/mapper thanks to SusanTheCat for pointing out it was missing .

Hey there Ludum Darers! This is my entry for SOPAjam, the almighty: “SOPA censorator 3000x”

You can see the entry here or play it directly on my website. (best viewed with Chrome)

Play Adventures in [REDACTED]

It’s made with Twine, an wiki based engine to do your own “Choose Your Own Adventure” type of games. The game is confusing, short, and like in real life, there’s no happy ending. Then again, this is my first game, a warm up for the upcoming mini LD with the Fear theme.

I hope you enjoy it, and please be gentle

- Fixed several UI bugs
- Added unit selector for tile size
- Added status pannel and tile info
- Added default tiles for demo use
http://www.callidusrex.com/mapper

1. What OS are you using? (Windows / Linux – Include which version if you so desire but it is not necessary)
2. Are you using 32Bit or 64Bit? (This is the biggy)

My breakdown of events:

1. I haven’t produced anything worth submitting – only got much of the backbone finished
2. I have learnt a lot about the workings of C++ and the SDL library
3. I managed to produced my very first makefile to automate building and debugging
4. I have a basis for a game I have wanted to make for a while
5. I might still have some time to finish in time for the Jam Deadline

Good luck to other participants!

Finally is all right to start the competition, all is ready!!

My desktop is ready to work:

You may notice that my desktop is well tidy and have a pretty visual!!

Well, good luck for all!! And much more luck for me!!!

This is my first LD so I want to get things cleared up.

Can I use fonts in my game or do I have to make my own? If so How?

Anyways this is what I will be using For this LD

Unity for the game engine

Visual c# express for code

Paint.Net and Inkscape for 2D sprites and textures

Blender for animation and modelling

Bfxr for sound effects

Music, havent decided probably no music as I have no musical talent

Oh and I currently have a game on RocketHub(international kickstarter), You should check it out: http://rkthb.co/4587

I have to do a full citation!
Please send me an e-mail to richard.blechinger@hotmail.com, include your FULL NAME, OR your FIRST NAME and the FIRST LETTER of your LAST NAME, i.e “Johnny M.”, if you want to be kept anonymous.

That’s it. Now you can read the rest of the article.

You have 2 weeks.

Post anything you know about “indie”, answers to common questions, opinions, and more, I can convert any data.

• Do you think you could live off your hobby?
  Your definition of “indie” vs. “AAA”,
  Post-Mortems,
  Success (or terrible failure),
  Which language you use,
  Which IDE you prefer,
  Indie-Magazines,
  Articles,
  Games (Windows, or Flash/HTML5/Java),
  Examples of random code snippets (Commented if possible, please)
  ANYTHING.

It doesn’t have to be all too technical, because my classmates aren’t exactly computing geniuses. (Some random commented code snippets are okay, though. Just for showing them what’s going on behind the scenes)

Also, if I meet any of you on IRC while I’m slacking, I may ask stuff :p

There you go, bombard me, LD-Community!

The donation system is still available if you really want to contribute more. At this point our hosting should be covered for over a year, so contributions above and beyond will be used at the organizers discretion. (I’ve been thinking about buying a pair of giraffes …) But really, we’ll probably keep a hefty buffer in case our hosting costs go up again After the optimization we did to the site, though, I’m hoping our costs will stay under control.

I just want to say a thanks again, this has been an awesome year for Ludum Dare and I can’t wait to see what happens in 2012!

-Phil
P.S. a special thanks to PoV (Mike Kasprzak) for setting up the donation system! It worked great!

After much deliberation, we’ve decided to start taking donations again. If it turns out that isn’t enough, we will investigate some of the other options. I’d especially like to thank everyone that contacted me directly about outright hosting, boxes, sponsorships, etc. We may still need you, but for the sake of the community, we’ve decided to try donations first.

To find out how we’re doing, or to make a contribution, visit the following page:

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

It’s important to us that Ludum Dare stay free for all. We don’t want anyone to feel obligated to contribute. But if you’d like to help us out though, it would be much appreciated.

We have control over our VPS, so we can raise and lower our plans as we need to. We’re currently on a $90 plan. There was some unexpected heavy Reddit traffic the other day, and with the October Challenge about to kick off, we’ll be keeping a close eye on this to optimize our costs.

Thanks again everyone. And now it’s time for me to go kick-off the October Challenge.

- increpare’s miniLD (Ludum Dare)
- Orca Jam (in Victoria Canada)
- GPCv8 (Game Prototype Challenge)
- Mysticism Pageant (Super Friendship Club)
- Story Game (Experimental Gameplay Project)
- Glorious Trainwrecks (Klik of the Month Klub: only 2 hours long!)
- Pyweek #13 (Python Game Programming Challenge)

Some of these jams are ongoing all that week or even over the entire month.  If you are super mega hardcore, maybe you can make one game that fits all the themes and submit it to multiple game jams! Anyone up for the challenge?

Time: Well, I kind of didn’t learn anything here. I like everyone wildly overestimated what i can get done in 48 hours. I spent ~26 hours. But I am always over-estinating time. At work especially where I’m making games daily, I still think – “a week, sure, no problem”… Then I get bitten by time for disrespecting it. I usually double estimates to stop this… )

Instructions/GUI/Intro: Never spend enough time on these and they’re really important. Far too interested in the idea of the game, the mechanic and how it plays. Never on how to teach a player to understand it. The GUI needed an overhaul or actually doing in some cases (falling back to the default Unity stuff).

Planning: I need to plan and timetable stuff out next time. I think I spent 45 minutes modelling a gun, but it’s not visible and should have stuck with something simpler. If I planned everything, allotted time to each part with contingency then maybe the GUI would have been better.

Too big: Next time I’m going to aim for a 12 or 6 hour game. 24+ hours of coding over the weekend on top of all the game coding I do in the week means I didn’t have a proper weekend. I may have gone out for dinner so my wife didn’t kill me for ignoring her that long, but today, on Monday, I’m zonked.

I think that’s it for my thoughts for now. Hope you enjoyed my game…

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-21/?action=rate&uid=4757

Jasper

Part 1: Singleplayer. Uploaded during the compo and posted on IRC.
Part 2: Multiplayer. Uploaded a moment ago.

The two songs used in them represent the two anime soundtracks that helped me keep motivated throughout the compo. (Haha)

Computers used:

Battleship Asus: Android tablet running Ubuntu 11.04. (AH THE DETERMINATION)

Battleship PC: A quad-core PC with 4GB of RAM, used towards the end of timelapse part 2.

Apps used: gedit, terminal, javac, zip, mtpaint, nano, wc -l, etc.

Timelapses:

Timelapse part 1

Timelapse part 2