My favourite out of the them would be teleportation, I think that could result in some really fun games.. or really disorientating games

Rating entries is a damn hard job. I know many of you think very little about rating or even openly hate it, but IMHO this seems to also be an important part of LD. Especially commenting on people’s entries, giving some feedback to the community, some constructive criticism. And yet, I can still see many users with 0% coolness. There are 427 (71.29%) people with coolness under average of 3.523% and 190 of them didn’t rate any games… Why is that? I know everybody has a life and so on, but come on! You CAN rate at least 6 games or so! I mean, I’m not expecting everyone to leave their lives and rate games, but honestly – if someone has found the time to participate in LD, he or she should also participate in the voting (or at least commenting) process, even if just a little.

I spent on this more than a few days already, just trying to rate as many games as I can, because for a few days I’m not going to rate anything, as I’m gonna be without internet access (sounds horrible, I know).

A few days ago I was pretty bored and wrote a small program in Python to analyze stuff and help me pick games to rate faster, as I find the webpage with entries a little lacking. And because I like numbers and plots, too. Since I noticed that many of LD participants still have coolness around zero, I figured I could share this thing – maybe it will mobilize some of them to give some feedback. Or will be useful in any other way.

So, feature-wise, the script parses LD webpage with your ratings and generates a html file looking like this:

Here are the links:

• Windows binary package (py2exe) + source (tested on Win7 64bit) (py2exe site says it probably needs this)
• Python source only (clean Python 2.7.2, only native Python library dependencies)

Usage:

• Login onto the Ludum Dare site, and go to the voting page with ALL entries (not the one with screenshots, the one with all your ratings):
  http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-21/?more=1&q=
• Save source code of this webpage to file data.htm and save it in the same direcory as analyze script/ binary
• Run the script (see README.TXT for more info anyway)
• Analyzer data is saved to log.html in current directory. Open it with Firefox or something similar
• To refresh data stored in log.html, you need to repeat this process

When I started with my first LD, I was at first confused by the somewhat complex voting-system. So I thought I could explain it for anybody who’s interested.

This is what the voting-screen looks like. Here are the details:

1. The list of Developers. The entire list is randomized, to ensure equal visibility. At the beginning only 20 names are visible, but once a certain number of those has been voted on, the list extends, showing the next random batch.

2. Pressing this button will load the entire list. It will still be randomized, though.

3. The amount of votes this developer has gotten.

4. Coolness-rating. Hovering over this spot reveals the coolness-rating of this developer. Coolness is awarded for the percentage of rated games. Should this person rate ALL games, she would get a coolness-rating of 100%. The developer will get a medal displayed on the left, next to the name. Bronze at 25%, Silver at 50%, and gold at 75%.

5. Competition-rating. Games can be rated in the categories Overall, Innovation, Fun, Adherence to Theme, Graphics, Audio, Humor and Community. The Community-rating describes the actions of the developer towards the community, for example by providing blog-posts, timelapse-videos, and other additional pieces of information. Ratings can be 1 to 5 stars, or “n/a”, should you feel you cannot give a proper rating in a certain category.

6. Jam-Rating. The same system as in the competition, only with games that have been entered in the Jam.

7. Text-Comment. An X appears should you have given a comment

I hope this helps

-Matthew

The June miniLD #27 (theme: ALL TALK) has officially ended with a bang! The results are in!

View all the stats for each of the 30 games here:
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-27/?more=1

The gold medal for fun goes to Zed with his zombie/bacon adventure, Adventures in the Public Domain. Gold for gameplay goes to 31eee384 for his IRC hacker simulation, Secretnet. Gold for presentation goes to Jake Elliot for Last Tuesday, his eerie visual novel about a world devoid of people.

Other standouts include Zillix’s Acquiescence, Reltair’s Project Eidolon, Radiatoryang’s Polonius and smalldeadinsect’s Leaks.  There were 30 games created in all, and many not mentioned above that were truly awesome.  Check them out!

As one of the most active mini dares in recent memory and one filled with enthusiasm and positivity, I just want to thank you all for being such a creative, energetic and kind-hearted bunch of gamedevs. You rock.

Viva Ludum Dare!

Here is a shiny graph of votes and coolness

It generates itself from the current data so it will be up to date.
It will actually work for some previous competitions too.

Since some of the entries get a LOT of comments i feel that we should put some of the not so famous entries into the spotlight. This is a list of all entries and the number of comments they have received. It was quite interesting  (and sad)  that so many (42) entries was almost ignored getting less than 2 comments and that 16 entries got no comments at all.

So, let’s see to it that everyone gets some feedback by the end of the voting period =)

0 LD20X6: Initialisms by whitelynx(2)
0 Mary’s Awesome Adventure by brainiac256(8)
0 Matt’s Trial Dungeon by matt9837(0)
0 Only for voting by vladp(0)
0 Quest for the enlightenment by medice(0)
0 Right Thing. Right Time. by chinchang(2)
0 Soul Keeper [ fixed link ] by floko(0)
0 Space Adventures In Space by lord-tim(0)
0 Square City [jam only] by oberhamsi(0)
0 Super Fat Man by wweemmnn(0)
0 The Creek by petermd(0)
0 The Legend of Iowa by synthecism(0)
0 Torches by condr(0)
0 UpdateGames by samuellevy(0)
0 Violent Security Essentials by slowxm(0)
0 Zombieland by panbake(0)
1 A Sword and His Hero by rtward(0)
1 A Unnamed Whale Adventure by anthonyl(0)
1 Brik by alexandersshen(0)
1 DudeBlob by agnulf(0)
1 Escape Alone by guns_are_toys(0)
1 Fearless journalist version 0.9 by nguillemot(0)
1 From the wreck of HMS Lightning… by arowx(0)
1 G.R.A.N.T. Device by emptyflash(1)
1 GunHack by samuraiforever(0)
1 Hoot & Annie by uncade(0)
1 Hot Potato by gbgames(0)
1 House of Dangerous Kittens by spoon(7)
1 Icarus’ Descent by 8bitmuse(0)
1 Insert Rupy and take th… take something by tut-tuuut(3)
1 It’s dangerous to “go” alone. by tehalynn(2)
1 It’s Dangerous to Fall Alone by tfendall(0)
1 It’s Too Dangerous To Go Alone Take This Shotgun a.k.a Not The Game We Wanted To Make by spleeny(0)
1 Its not dangerous anymore by goatfactory(0)
1 KingsExercise by cornedor(0)
1 LD72 by fredericrp(0)
1 So I herd u liek memetics (Also Comic Sans) by nandrew(0)
1 The Invasion of The Blobs by philhassey(1)
1 The Way Home by pdyxs(0)
1 towlrAlone by redbone(1)

(more…)

Taste the rainbow. Double Zombie Rainbow.

Mini LD #19 is now over and submissions are closed (if someone was left out, please make yourself heard). Does that mean it’s now entirely over? Of course not.

Voting is now open. It’ll run for a week and differs a bit from regular LDs in that there’s just two categories: Gameplay and Presentation. I believe it should be straightforward, but here’s some help if it’s unclear what they mean:

Gameplay focuses on the actual game and game idea, its innovation, how well it plays etc. Fun belongs too a large part to it.

Presentation is more to do with the package the game comes in: graphics and sounds, user interfaces, polish and humor, and things like that. Fun can of course be affected by this.

As usual, only people who submitted an entry can vote, but anyone can of course check the games out. I think it’s been a great mini so far, and I hope you’ve enjoyed it and like the entries. See you with the results in a week.

Update, June 21: Voting is over and the results are in.

The final round of theme voting is approaching, and I’ve been thinking. Considering how big Ludum Dare is getting, and how influential the theme is to the quality of the compo, I want to make sure we pick the right one. We don’t want to repeat LD#11′s mistake of choosing Minimalist and losing entrants just because they couldn’t come up with anything, or get a boring theme and be left with over 100 identical games. Plus, this time around we had so many theme suggestions (over 400) that they had to be trimmed down based on informal criteria, some themes that people would’ve liked to see were left out. I want to discuss what actually makes a good theme, so that we can get everyone on the same page and come up with a better way to select and vote for themes.

Criteria

To know what makes a good theme, first we need to know who it’s supposed to be good for. What kind of people participate in LD? Why do they participate? Here’s the reasons I came up with:

• It’s a fun, low-barrier-to-entry test of one’s abilities.
• It’s an excuse to work on something and get a feeling of accomplishment.
• It’s a social community event.
• It’s a chance to achieve fame and fortune, if you make a good game.
• Competing to win is a test of one’s mastery of design, coding, and art skills.

Now, participants are very varied people. We have different development styles, different skill levels of designing/coding/art, and different preferences with regards to game genre and style. A good theme should be able to accomodate as many of these as possible, while unifying the entries with a common inspiration. With the goals of LD participants in mind, here are my proposed criteria for a good theme:

1. Can be interpreted in a number of ways such that it is a key part of the game.
2. Sufficiently restricts freedom of choice, to stimulate creativity.
3. Can be implemented in different game genres, using different mechanics.

(more…)

Also joining the “give at least as many votes as you get” crowd.

Additionally, I generated a randomized list of the entries to play and rate for unbiased selection