This month’s Mini Ludum Dare is a special one: it’s the Mini LD #42, and it’s also being held on the weekend of May 25th (Towel Day). Thus, we’re celebrating with a tribute to Douglas Adams!

The theme for this month is “Earth will be Destroyed“. I believe there might be people unfamiliar to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, so I decided for a more broad theme. In any case, you’re encouraged to use as much of Douglas Adams’ work as you can (or don’t, feel free to do whatever you want =P). As usual, everything goes!

The de facto period for the jam is May 24-26 12:00 AM UTC, but you can start before if you want to, and submissions will be open until the end of the month, in case you need some extra time.

DON’T PANIC!

Heyyy what’s up? I don’t know how these go or anything but I made my first game EVERRRRR so let’s take a shot at it!

So I decided that I wanted to make a simple physics sandbox sorta thing, and the easiest way to explain this is some kind of minimalist version of The Incredible Machine, which is a game I absolutely loved growing up. Usually my favorite part of any game like that isn’t figuring out how to deal with the complex mechanics of each piece of the contraption, but moreso getting the angle on a platform or curve juuuust right so that it sends the ball or whatever flying in the desired direction. If you’ve played ATV Offroad Fury or Tiny Wings you know what I’m talking about.

In the end, I’m really happy with what I accomplished. I stuck to the 48 hour rules but my time spilled over into the jam because I had plans all day both Friday and Saturday, leaving me with only Sunday to make this game. On top of that, I slept through my alarm, so I basically had 12 hours starting Sunday to work on the game. On Monday, I left work early and spent another 6 hours crunching and panicking and having all sorts of doubts about myself and my abilities, but managed to pull through and submit a game with 5 minutes left. Let’s get to the bulleted lists!

THINGS THAT WENT WELL
• UNITY!!! Man, I love Unity. I have been struggling with it the past few months trying to make anything work with that damn physics engine. Also I had never created anything other than small prototypes because the learning curve for making anything remotely complex discouraged me and I gave up. This time however, everything just clicked, and I powered through and now I feel like I can do anything with it.
• Graphics! I was really pleased with how the look of the game turned out. I didn’t know how to make a GUI in Unity and I didn’t have time to learn, so I just did the best I could with some weird/bad workarounds. I also have extremely limited experience with Blender, but I was able to figure everything out that I needed to and slap some pixel art on it. Woop woop.
• Physics! I’d like to eventually speed everything up a bit, but I was super happy with how the ball rolled and reacted to curves.

THINGS THAT WENT TERRIBLY OH GOD EVERYTHING IS ON FIRE
• Controls! They’re shit! I know! So does everyone who played it . They kinda made sense when you look at the piece you’re moving/rotating from this angle (press the key to move it in that direction),

but move around to the other side, and you’re presented with this catastrophe.

They were the best I could come up with given how much time I gave myself, but also the biggest thing that made me want to give up. I tried thinking about ways to fix them, but eventually decided to just move on.

BUT HEY GUESS WHAT I spent the week after the competition fixing them, along with a host of other improvements. Check out the post-compo version if you’d like!
• Music! I had long been toying with the idea of making a song using only my violin for all the parts, likely a mix of using the bow, plucking, and tapping/hitting it for percussion. This felt like a perfect opportunity for that, because it fit with the idea of minimalism. What resulted was the product of 30 minutes and a shitty Rock Band mic. I’ll eventually redo it and go for a more building ambient/atmospheric sort of aesthetic.

So there you have it. My first game. Ever. Ludum Dare has done wonders for my confidence and ability, and I’m looking forward to finishing this thing proper, hopefully after Sophie Houlden’s Fishing Game Jam. Where the game is now, I’m super happy with the controls, and am working on changing the ball to a constant stream of water so the player doesn’t have to go through a long waiting process every time they want to test out their solution. Any other criticisms or suggestions are welcome. TEAR IT APART

• Do not bother with an editor (yes, there is one, but it’s obfuscated).  Use static, static, static files or better yet internal data structures instead.  PD started with internal data only but ended up wasting time with an editor half-way through — though it reused a lot of the code from the player.
  
  
• Focus on instructions and user hand-holding more.  PD has them, but they could have used a lot more attention.  In fact, in future make sure to write them as early on as possible (after getting some prototype working) as a test of the game design.
• Don’t add scoring/win condition stuff too close to the end of the project.  One reason PD is so unbeatable on some screens is partially due to a bug whose fix I’m holding until after the LD compo.  That bug stems from trying to add a scoring mechanic right at the end of development.  Try to get all game-mechanic related stuff done by the mid-way checkpoint.
• More UI drawings should be made immediately following basic analysis.
• Save more time for “flair”.  A simple score update animation would have made a world of difference — we’ll see after the post-compo update.  also animations relating to the “dust” in Pixel Dust might have been good.
• Spend more time on the release message.  Just copying the journal doesn’t cut it.
• Possibly be more willing to adjust issues after the compo.  The rules for this are a bit hazy, but I’m thinking I could have fixed my scoring bug following submission.
• Get all hosting/repo stuff out of the way ahead of time.
• Need to add a place to gather issues right on the web interface (even if a link back to github).
• GAE was a mixed bag.  Got things going quickly, but did have to spend a little time working through GAE issues/idiosyncrasies as well (especially in the process of storing/retrieving boards from the DB — see point 1 though).

Some things that worked well:

• Brainstorming/analysis phase — that first 1-2 hours of analyzing the options was a clear help.
• HTML — worked fine for this type of project and make most of it cross-compatible.  I suspect that faster games might require too much tuning though to keep fast.
• Web server from the start — if using HTML, why not?
• Use of TODO file instead of standard bug/issue tracker to develop initial features.  This ties the results nicely with the version control and is very quick to manage.  Consider adding a trigger to make sure the file changes on every merge, especially to master.
• Avoiding graphics saved a lot of time, but that was partially because of the theme.  May not be so lucky next time, but definitely avoiding making pictures is a time saver.
• Making the site look and feel flow reasonably well with the game.

And most importantly — make sure to have fun; if you don’t, likely no one else will either!

And I did with Pixel Dust.  Hopefully others will too as the post-compo updates are deployed.

Priorities turned out a lot more thoughtful and meaningful than what I usually make. One player described it as “exceedingly artsy,” which I though you had to be deliberately trying to do to achieve, but here we are. Let’s see what went right and wrong:

The Good:
-The metaphor seems to resonate with people. When the theme was announced, I didn’t want to make something that just looked simple. Minimalism is a movement for communicating ideas, so I wanted to make a game that communicated SOMETHING. I’ve done a lot of reading about stress, success and perseverance lately, so after about two hours of thought, I decided to try to combine minimalism in the artistic sense (simplistic elements) with minimalism in more of a zen-living sense. I know I’m not the only person out there who would love to cut a whole bunch of crap out of their life!

-Discovering while developing. I learned some new things, but I was especially pleased with some of the deductions I was able to make while prototyping and playtesting. Originally, the squares would have been five different colours, and looking at the labels would tell you which things you want to get rid of. After a run at this, I found that the action ground to a halt. The reading sucked the energy out of the game, so I replaced some of the colors with black squares that were obviously time-sucking stuff like Farmville and Internet trolls, so players could tell at a glance what absolutely HAD to go, and then could examine the other things more closely later. Bigger squares originally also took more clicks to destroy, but I scrapped that to speed up the gameplay and give players fingers a break.

-The music. This was my first time composing music, and I’m pleased with the results. I used Milkytracker and some free piano samples, and tried to mimic Philip Glass, a minimalist composer. To the person in the IRC channel who encouraged me to keep going when I was discouraged: THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU.

-Low-stress development. Last time, when I made Build-a-Bandit for LD25, it was my first original game ever. I was up until wee hours in the morning trying to cram in interface bits, figure out the intricacies of my spriting program, and wrestling with packaging the whole thing up in an exe file. This time, with about ten other small projects under my belt, (including my warm-up game, Gotta Groove!), I was able to get things up and running much more quickly.

The Bad:

-The scoring system. With so many players getting negative scores (often six or seven digits!), I wish I had changed the scoring system to something like a stress percentage. Then the goal would be to reduce your stress to 10% or less, instead of playing for three minutes only to discover you have negative 800000 points.

-Fun. I swore that this time, if nothing else, I would try to make something fun, after a somewhat dismal Fun ranking for Build-a-Bandit. At least it has some other redeeming qualities, but I don’t think Priorities is very fun, when everything is said and done. I definitely made it more fun throughout the course of development, but ultimately, I don’t expect people to have a blast playing it. Maybe that’s OK?

-The balance. I spent the last six hours of my development time begging for playtesters on IRC and didn’t really get the sample size that I wanted. I was acing the game every time, but a lot of testers first said they wound up with solid walls of black, and then found it easier on subsequent tries. Come deadline time, I cut all the spawn rates by about 10% and prayed it would work out.

Priorities is set up in such a way that it is either laughably easy, or hopelessly difficult. The way that the total number of squares influences how fast squares grow and spawn made it possible to completely screw yourself by taking care of too many big things while neglecting small things, or by taking lots of time deciding what to get rid of instead of ruthlessly triaging. Since it is all metaphorical for the stress we cart around via our to-do-lists and bad habits, and succeeding depends on doing something true to real life, I don’t know if I would change the mechanics given the chance, but I do wish that the balance wouldn’t tip so extremely to either side.

There are a few other changes I would make. I want to put a border around the squares so they don’t all fuse into a big blob as they get larger, and though you could argue that this too is metaphorical, it would be nice if squares didn’t spawn under other squares.

Overall, I’m happy with how Priorities turned out, and I hope you give it a try!
I’m also very proud of my warmup entry, Gotta Groove!, so if you want to smash your keyboard a bit, check that out too.

I need to rate 78 more games to reach my goal of 10% of all games on LD #26.. Well. I have more then 48h to do it

I can’t get tired of being glad to see so much amazing games here!

Here’s a video my progress so far:

And here’s the original Ludum Dare entry (I promise to play and rate everyone’s games who comments on Space Jellyfish!):

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=13748

Woo games!!

Next LD I’ll use JavaScript instead of Processing, and vote for a weekend that works for me. This time it wasn’t a great weekend to do it

I won’t win anything, as I’ve gotten a lot of negative feedback about the way the game feels and it’s a pretty simple game anyways, but it was fun.

Looking forward to see what everyone won, and see you all next Ludum Dare

-Cheezey

Click here for the entry page.

I also posted a video featuring the changes (note that the actual game looks much better) below. Oh and don’t forget to watch my timelapse.

And here is a GIF preview:

— Decide: Saturday we could structure the 4-column sprite sheet.
– Play: Early on Saturday, we could playtest timing.
- Edit: Saturday we could quiz American/British like “restroom/toilet”.

Play now!

By Duncan Robson and Ethan Kennerly

last chance to vote so I’m laying down here some of my favorite entries. I like games with an interesting take on the theme, especially through gameplay. I also tend to appreciate games with a great mood and interesting mechanics.
Of course the order of appearance does not matter!

Boximalism by poohshoes

Circles by Are

People by BenW

ZIN by henrykun

shon by ilovepixel

I wish to thank you guys for making these games, I really loved them and think that these are truly innovative and interesting.

Take care,Simon

Click here to play and rate!

Click here to check out my website

My first Ludum Dare entry, and the second game I’ve ever made! I’ve decided to go for a game with very simple mechanics, but is difficult as hell to win. While most people chose to go for a minimalistic art style, I’ve decided to keep the controls (only up/w and down/s) and actual gameplay minimalistic instead. It seems extremely impossible initially, but after awhile you get the hang of it.

Gameplay:
You control a spaceship that you move up and down to avoid getting hit by asteroids. Minimalistic yes? You have 5 seconds of small numbers of asteroids, then 60 seconds of full on walls of asteroids before another 5 seconds of calm if you make it that far. If you make it through all that, you can beat the game in a mere 70 seconds. Trust me, it isn’t easy. I swore profusely while testing the game.

Story:
You are the first test rocket to escape earth’s gravitational field! Unfortunately, the snarky people who made the rocket never made any way for you to turn the thrusters off, forcing you to have to dodge your way through an asteroid field.

Code:
I wrote the game from scratch in Java, using knowledge from my previous game to help me. I followed similar code for things like the game loop, the sound loading and playing, and the resource management. Coding was done quite fast as I already knew how I should structure the engine, and I hard coded a lot of things to make the progress faster. I though this was a great decision in the end to avoid over optimisation as it really helped me pump out the code quicker and leave me more time for the other things.

Difficulties:
The most trouble I had in this project was deciding what game to make, then actually starting it. Once I actually made some progress and knew where I was going with it, I flew through it quickly. I am really proud that I managed to make it in the designated 48 hours.

Click here to play and rate!

Click here to check out my website

As the competition nears end, I figured I’d put out a video playthrough of my game for anyone who either couldn’t play it or wasn’t able to complete it (I never made it round to adding saves/checkpoints so you had to play it all in one sitting to see the ending).

If you want to play Proxy, Click Here

Always appreciate more feedback and ratings. Hopefully I’ll get to do something with this project in the future, fix any bugs and expand it into the game I originally envisioned.

Cheers,

Dan

Minigames Octacade LD entry

I made a gameplay video for the video compilation project, but that amounts to only 1 second of gameplay per game! So I also made a  longer video with 10 seconds per game.

What went wrong

• theme: I was definitely NOT confident with the Minimalism theme. I like to spend lots of time of particles & art, and most people actually expected minimalist games to have minimalist art, which is a shame, imho. I really regret I didn’t take this opportunity to work on another kind of art style.
• gameplay: as I gave up on the minimalist art style, I only had one solution left for the theme. The gameplay. I didn’t have any idea until satursday evening, which is incredibly late for a LD… Therefore, I didn’t have much time left for polish and to develop the themed gameplay properly. Anyway, I really believe the gameplay fits the theme (a minimal equipment that creates lots of constraints in a shoot em up). It’s not as obvious as other entries, but I think it’s still ok. Actually, I was planning to give up if I couldn’t fit the theme into my game (which I believe is the essence of Ludum Dare).
• state machine: the way I handled game sequences (intro, gameplay, dialogues, outro) was… horrible. Seriously, the code works but it was a little Vietnam to write maintain. I will HAVE to use a better architecture next time.

What went right

• scoring: I didn’t have time to put more focus on the combo based score system. Anyway, it really works well imo and adds replayability. Usually, that’s not something I have in my LD entries, so I’m proud of that.
• level design: once again, my level editor was Photoshop. Color coded pixels in a grid that define wall positions & enemies. The result is a really big level with lots of secret places to discover… and a potato
• sounds & music: as always, LabChirp was an amazing tool to create nice sfx quickly. I also used AutoTracker with some modifications, which also works great. However, autotracker musics tend to sound like each other, so I’m not sure I will use it again.
• intro: I had some spare time to make a proper intro… which is cool

DOWNLOAD AND PLAY AT THE GAME HERE  (English and/or Frenche versions ) : http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=22158 or http://www.adipson.fr

heres the link to new game: http://lowtek.co.uk/unity_games/Pencil/Pencil2/WebPlayer.html

Now has a radar.
Enemies randomly spawn
Fixed the way the line is drawn
Made the controls easyer

Hope you all Enjoy

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=18865

more updates on the way ,

Hard mode,
and increasing difficulty

Hey there!
I’ve made a little trailer for our game. Sound is made by LeoL.
Please have a look and enjoy!
Don’t forget to rate!

DRUG HUNT

Check it out at  http://vindince.com

This has the link to my game , and will be updated with links to the post-mortem and links to my friends music who did the music for our game!

Monsters 101

Do Hairballs Dream of Dryer Sheets

Patient Zero