[Coda]

Ludum Dare 41: "Combine 2 incompatible genres"

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/...f-indianapolis

The Dungeons of Indianapolis
The smell of exhaust! The roar of the engines! The thrill of the race! You won’t get any of these as you dive into…

The Dungeons of Indianapolis!

Enjoy competing for the best time to complete all 200 laps of the legendary Indianapolis 500, now in the style of classic text adventures like Zork or the Colossal Cave Adventure.



This was not the game I set out to write. The game I set out to write was, in fact, a racing / roguelike mashup instead of a racing / text adventure mashup. But between having unexpected technical difficulties trying to manipulate meshes in Unity and getting called into work on what was supposed to be a vacation day, I had to abandon that game. (I might pick it up again later; I think it was a solid concept.) This was a crushing blow, as it would have been the first time I failed to complete a Ludum Dare game since I started participating in LD36.

But then I had THIS hilarious idea.

I wrote this in the three hours between getting out of the office and the submission deadline. It’s not going to win any award for best game (although it might potentially win one for fastest time from conception to completed implementation) but I think the joke is solid enough to score well in the humor category.

[EverAshwood]

I love playing some of these when there's nothing to do in class lol

[Francisco]

Any advice for someone participating in their first game jam?

[Coda]

The biggest piece of advice I can give: Use what you know.

It takes a great deal of experience to truly understand one's own limits. For a first game jam, you should stick with the stuff you know how to do without having to spend mental effort on the "how" -- your hands will be quite full enough with the "what".

The tools don't even have to be designed for making games. Game-specific tools provide a lot of convenient features, but for a first jam the overhead of learning the tools during the time limit isn't likely to be worth it. Meanwhile, humans have been cobbling together games out of stuff not meant for games since time immemorial; the first video game was made with an oscilloscope.

The second piece of advice: Know thyself.

Your first game jam is likely going to be your first foray into managing a time-constrained project. If you're going to be successful, you need to hone your instincts about your own skill levels. Know what you're good at. Know what's too ambitious for you. Know how long it takes you to do things.

You will not be good at this.

Accept that fact right off the bat and it'll be easier. Project management is, in some ways, harder to get good at than programming, because it's a much softer skill with few visible signs of feedback along the way. So underestimate your ability, overestimate how long it'll take you to do things, and plan accordingly.

This of course ties back into the first piece of advice; since you only have a limited amount of time, you need to understand your competencies well enough to know what you have any hope of actually achieving.

Advice the third: Figure out what you're going to do.

This is the hardest part. There's a universe of possibilities out there, and you only have time to make one game. So before you ever write a single line of code, spend AT LEAST a full hour brainstorming ideas, then spend AT LEAST another full hour fleshing out your favorite idea or two. You can waive the brainstorming phase if a brilliant idea jumps out at you right off the bat, but don't skimp on the fleshing-out phase! If you jump in without a good plan, you'll find yourself spending too much time on things that feel important but then you'll find yourself with a few hours left to go with lots of code written but it's not a game.

Having a good plan means knowing what features you want to include, where you're going to find assets (what will you make yourself, what will you get from free game asset websites, etc.), and what order you're going to need to build the components in. Making this part of the plan might make you realize that you actually can't go with the idea you picked because you don't have the skills or the tools or the assets; you want to discover this early on instead of halfway through the jam.

An important part of this plan: Start small. Get something up and running quickly and then add in functionality piece by piece, with the most important parts coming first. That way if you find yourself running out of time, you can cut features and still be left with something that you can still call a game.

And the final point of advice: Don't be afraid to deviate from the plan.

Having the plan is super important, but the format of a game jam sometimes means compromises have to be made. It's all a matter of keeping your priorities in line: Your goal isn't to make the specific game you planned. Your goal is to make a game. This goal is even more important than keeping to the jam's theme; submitting a game that doesn't fit the theme is better than not submitting a game at all.

Keep your options flexible instead of getting too fixated on one specific concept. Especially for your first game jam, keep your eyes open for compromises that will simplify the work you have to do. Be ready to pivot into a different idea that can make use of the things you've built.

I've done five game jams so far and none of them have ended with the game that I had originally set out to make. My first one was supposed to be about a primitive people dealing with an alien invasion, and it ended up being about two tribes battling over a gem hoard.



In the end, finishing a game jam successfully can be really rewarding. You'll learn a lot about yourself and you'll develop skills that you might not have been pushed to hone otherwise.

[Francisco]

Wow Coda, thanks a ton! That's a lot of good advice. Especially the bit about admitting to yourself that something just can't happen in the span of time you have, I struggle with that.

A few more questions if that's alright. I know you've participated in the Ludum Dare, would you say that's a good first jam for beginners? I heard it can be judged a bit harshly, but I'd rather hear that from someone whose actually been in one.

Also, would you say doing "practice jams" is a decent idea? Finding an old theme from a jam and setting yourself the time limit? I feel like it'd be nice to try making something jamlike without the stress of having to release it, at least at first. Could also help with finding out what I could be capable of doing within 48 hours.

Thanks again!

[Coda]

Don't do the Ludum Dare compo as a beginner. For that matter, don't do the Ludum Dare compo unless you're an extremely competitive individual in the first place. The jam gives you 24 hours longer and you're only rated on the game's style and thematics instead of competing against the other participants. I've never done the compo because to me the fun isn't in trying to beat everyone else; the fun is in forcing myself to see an enjoyable project through instead of having it fall to the wayside half-completed because I got distracted or busy.

But at least in the non-compo jam scoring... I've never seen anyone be cruel about anything. I mean, I can see how someone might think the reviews are harsh because people are more likely to comment if something went poorly than if something went well enough but not spectacularly. That's the kind of feedback that ANY creative endeavor is going to receive no matter the context. You just need to expect that and get used to it. But the community as a whole is actually quite friendly.

Practice is DEFINITELY a good idea. I don't know if you necessarily need to put it in the format of a jam (although that might help you if giving yourself the deadline is useful) but I definitely advise making a few fun little toys in a short time frame. I do that just as a hobby anyway -- one time I made a pinball-like game on my laptop in the car during a road trip, just for the fun of it. It lets you familiarize yourself with the tools, with your own skill levels and coding speed, and with the idea of making something small enough to finish quickly.

On the other hand, I strongly recommend releasing whatever it is you end up making! Show people what you've done. Get feedback on it. Since you're going to be presenting it as something fun you whipped up in a weekend, people are more likely to praise you for what you did well, and their feedback will be focused around how to improve it. And building up a portfolio of these little toy games is also really useful. I wish I had put more emphasis on accumulating a portfolio over the course of my career.

[Coda]

Another bit of advice: Consider partnering up with someone with more experience than you for your first jam. It could be jam experience, it could be project management experience, it could be development experience, but having a team means you have someone to bounce ideas off of and someone to help keep you moving and share the load.

[Francisco]

Ahh, I must have been reading about the compo when I saw that.

And as far as the deadline for practicing, I know I work better when I have a set time it has to be done by. Getting a working, fairly fun game out in 72 hours seems like a fairly daunting task on it's own, at least for me. But I think having someone else to work with would make things infinitely easier.

The issue I have with that is...It's never worked? And I know why, it's because I was too close with the people I was working with and all the time we tried to put into the game or whatever project spiraled into Reddit and Youtube. But, at the same time, I have a hard time trusting people I don't know anything about, so I'd feel weird just going on a forum or subreddit and asking if anyone is looking for a team. Do you have any advice on finding team members, where to look and how to go about choosing them?

Also, in regards to releasing games, would you recommend something like itch.io or Kongregate for hosting, or your own website? I'd personally go with the latter, but I'm not sure if it's even necessary at first.

[Coda]

I would strongly advise working with someone you already know. Hopefully the time constraints of the jam setting will help keep you on task. Working with someone you don't know well isn't going to work as well because you really need to know each other's skills and you need to not get distracted by interpersonal issues.

As for hosting... For Ludum Dare, lots of people just use Google Drive or Dropbox. This is where my team usually deploys our builds, although for this last one I used my own website. The Ludum Dare site itself provides a place to put screenshots and descriptions and stuff, so you don't really need much more than that.

If it's a web-based game, you'll need to find a host, though. Don't be That Guy and pick a site that runs ads, because some game hosting sites stick 30-second unskippable ads in front of games and nobody wants to sit through that. itch.io seems reputable. Kongregate is rather annoying.

[Francisco]

Hey Coda, do you have any experience with Construct 2?

[Coda]

No, I don't. I know of it because I came across it while looking through alternative game engines.

In general, though, I don't trust tools that claim to let you build games without writing any code.

The visual editor thing is still basically writing code, but without all of the nice advantages that actually working with real code provides. The concept is reasonably good for didactic use because you can focus on what's conceptually happening instead of having to learn syntax, and the limitations provide a useful structure to avoid paralysis.

But it doesn't scale. It's REALLY hard to share work in a team, and those limitations that make it easy to get started instead start really getting in your way when you try to go beyond the simple stuff it's good at. It's not a tool for professionals.

Depending on your learning style, it might even be counterproductive to pick it up. Some people have an easy time translating concepts across paradigms; for these people, a tool like Construct provides a useful introduction to the kinds of tools and functions that are necessary for game development. Switching to an actual professional-grade tool afterwards is a matter of figuring out how to do each piece of the task in the new environment.

But for other people, working with a tool like Construct teaches bad habits that become really hard to break. People in this group tie their knowledge tightly to their experiences, and switching tools leads to a cascading series of "this was so much easier before" moments because none of the learned techniques apply. I've seen people get too frustrated at this point and just give up.

Personally? I advise against it. But I don't begrudge people who it works for.

[Coda]

Ludum Dare 42: "Running out of space"

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/...ng-infestation

Swirling Infestation
Fight back against the curse that is spiraling into the town! It is a dark magic, contagious, spreading to other victims with no more than a touch.

You are the town's only hope, a sorceress with the power to drive off the curse.

You have three powers available to you:
* Pulse: A forceful burst that can push the curse out of its victims, leaving the physical world untouched. (Costs 1 wheel)
* Radar: Reach out to find the souls of the afflicted. (Drains energy when active)
* Teleport: An emergency escape. You have no control over the destination, but the curse can't follow you. (Costs 2 wheels)

Be cautious! You are strong enough to resist the curse, but you are not immune to it. While you are cursed, you still have access to all of your powers, but the strain of fighting its influence will quickly drain your vitality. Pulse will expel the curse from your body as easily as from the townspeople, and Teleport will leave the curse behind.

Once cast out of the body, the curse loses its virulence, but its frustrated power becomes an impassible maelstrom. Be wary of where you purge the curse, as the maelstrom will slowly grow, blocking you off and leaving you running out of space.

[hr]

I'm super proud of this one! I ended up doing this one all by myself because the partner I usually work with was on vacation this weekend and the person that volunteered to participate in his stead ended up doing absolutely nothing. I don't think the sprite work is particularly good, and the sound effects were thrown together in the last hour so they're not up to my usual level of polish... But I really like how the visual effects came out! Pulse pushing the curse out and it flaring up angrily is an awesome series of effects.

But the thing I'm most proud of is that this is in fact a complete game. It has an actual ending, unlike any of my previous Ludum Dare games (with the exception of Dungeons of Indianapolis). It's kind of a LAME ending because I didn't have time to put together anything special, and I wanted there to be a boss fight with interesting mechanics but I REALLY didn't have time for that. And you have options! Not just a single mechanic that you use for everything, but three distinct spells with different uses.

The logo was hacked together in five minutes. I saved it into the project right as the "time's up" tweet showed up. It's not embarrassing but it's really generic.

[Coda]

Ludum Dare 43: "Sacrifices must be made"

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/golden-lord/

Golden Lord

Praise the Golden Lord! Your people have lived on an island rich in gold and silver for generations, and they love you greatly. But now, monsters are invading the island! You have stepped down from heaven to protect your worshipers from the invaders, but your divine power depends on the sacrifices of precious metal that your people offer up to your altar.

______________________

I’d always intended to go back to my first jam game to try to improve on it after the initial weekend, but I never really took the time to do it. But as I was brainstorming for ideas for this theme, I realized I could adapt the ideas of that game and use them for this jam, so this is a reimagining of Bobble Battle, built from the ground up from all-new code and graphics.

This is the first time I’ve taken it upon myself to create all of the assets for a game jam by myself. Before I started working on the graphics Saturday morning I didn’t even know I had any skill in creating sprites from scratch.

While I did create the sound effects, I took them from a library of assets that I created in the past, so they aren’t eligible for scoring in the jam.

The underlying HTML5 game development toolkit is also of my own construction. I didn’t build it during the jam, but it doesn’t provide anything that you wouldn’t get from Unity3D, GameMaker: Studio, or any other development environment. All of the game logic, AI, physics, controls, and interface were built during the jam. I’ll be releasing the tools open-source for other developers to use once I’ve finished filling in some missing pieces.

[Stabbsworth]

ooh, nice. i'd be up for testing that engine out if you need a tester.

[Coda]

Oh most definitely! So far the only one that's ever built anything with this engine is me. XD Having someone else build something with it would be a really useful test.

I mean, having someone test my game is also useful, but I already know there are a couple of issues with the collision detection.

[Stabbsworth]

i'd 100% do a roguelike thing with that, or something. no idea how intensive that would be, though.