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Ludum Dare 29 | Ludum Dare 23 | Ludum Dare 22 | Ludum Dare 21 |
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Ludum Dare 16 | Ludum Dare 15 |
![]() I approve of your trophie Awarded by pants on April 27, 2011 | ![]() The Wretched Waterfowl Award Awarded by Gnauga on May 2, 2010 | ![]() The "Whee, Ladders!" Award for Most Enjoyable Incomprehension Awarded by NMcCoy on April 27, 2010 |
![]() I Can't Stop Playing This One Award of Addictiveness Awarded by KavuDX on April 26, 2010 | ![]() Cute Pixel Award Awarded by Ashkin on April 25, 2010 | ![]() The Minecraftyest Island Awarded by Tyler on April 24, 2010 |
Um
Just a moment ago I finally realized something I should’ve realized years and years ago, and decided that the best way to approach it would be to write an open apology.
Over the years of participating in Ludum Dares and other game jams, I have partly unthinkingly and partly knowingly cheated and otherwise acted maliciously in ways that have made my results look better than they deserve. This has happened in two ways:
In earlier LDs I’ve taken part in it’s also possible that I’ve added content after the deadline along with bugfixes, but I’m not certain of the extent of this kind of behaviour and I’m fairly certain it hasn’t happened in recent years (not that that makes it acceptable to have happened before!)
The former category of cheating has mostly concerned certain relatively simple “modules” that I’ve added to my projects upon starting to work on them; it would’ve been quite trivial to re-implement the same features during the actual compo and I doubt I’ve gained much advantage via this abuse of the rules; this of course doesn’t make my behaviour any less wrong, merely a bit dumber.
Using the “submission hour” for polish and features has definitely affected the quality of my entries significantly; I have no excuse for this behaviour.
It makes me angry at myself to have abused the goodwill of the community in such a way and I’m very very sorry that I’ve acted this way. The reason behind this kind of behaviour is probably partially in my own naïvete; when I first participated in LD I was much younger and thus had less of a moral compass, and after that it’s been easier to point at past offences and think “well, I did that before so I don’t have to care now, either”, or just not think about the whole issue in the first place. I’m glad I’ve realized that this way of thinking is actively malicious and morally wrong, but I’m really sad it took me this long to actually decide to acknowledge it and the awful things I’ve done. What makes me feel even more awful is the fact that I’ve manipulated my time lapse videos so that this behaviour couldn’t be seen in them.
So, again, I’m very deeply sorry to have acted in such a malicious manner, and I apologize for having been as dumb and mean as I have. Ludum Dare has been a very important part of my game developer hobby for these past 7 years and I’ve learned a lot and enjoyed all the experiences related to the event; I just wish this kind of attitude hadn’t been a part of it behind the scenes, or at least that I’d have been morally sound enough to stop doing it, feel genuinely sorry and apologize a long time ago.
As a gesture that someone hopefully finds useful, I’ve decided to upload the bits of engine I’ve re-used in many of my LD games; right now I can recall two that I’ve utilized in multiple entries (especially the latter can be found in nearly every entry):
Additionally I’ve used Adam “Sketchy” Hawker’s pathfinding tutorial in multiple entries, and while I’m not certain of how much of the tutorial code I’ve copied directly to my entries, I have a memory that suggests that I’ve done so and renamed variables afterwards to make this less apparent. This is really awful behaviour.
I have used these two particular engine pieces in a similarly cheaty way in other game jams, such as No More Sweden and Nordic Game Jam, for similarly dumb and irresponsible reasons, although without the intention to act maliciously (if that matters).
I hope that the fact that I bring this matter up on my own helps prove that I genuinely feel very sorry about it and wish to be a better person in the future. It’ll be somewhat scary to see what’ll come out of this, but in the end whatever possible bad outcomes are deserved and I’m nevertheless sure that this is the right thing to do, right now.
Here are the two pieces of engine mentioned:
Platforming engine (with slopes) – ThePodunkian kindly taught me the basics of this design years ago (in 2008, maybe?)
Screen size multiplier – I’m fairly sure I implemented this myself and refined it over the years.
Seems like Adam’s pathfinding tutorials are no longer available; I feel slightly uncomfortable uploading them as they are, but if anyone wants I can make a tutorial based on the system I’ve used.
In case it helps, I’m fine with my LD entries being removed from the site.
Time to sleep.
Woop woop
I don’t really have high hopes on finishing this in time. Eugh
Barp
I noticed the mini-LD only this morning after an allnighter, so I didn’t really have the energy to make a finished thing. However, I was inspired by some of the entries and decided to make a little proof-of-concept engine:
Behold, Pong Fortress! Or maybe Pongtress. Had I been less tired I would’ve added some more structures and actual gameplay elements. As it is, I couldn’t quite decide whether the players would be supposed to prevent the ball from hitting their side or their fortress; it’d be interesting to experiment with this more!
There have been some amazing entries and I’m honestly really surprised at how inspiring this theme ended up being. Great work!
I made a jam version of my game, Where They Once Were! However, since I had already submitted the game to the compo, I couldn’t really submit the same game again, so let’s just call this the post-compo version and be leave it at that, heh.
This version features:
– Sound effects courtesy of Freesound.org! (Credits in the Credits.txt that comes in the zip)
– A new, “ultimate” ending, bringing them to four in total.
Finished in time! I didn’t quite get everything I wanted in, but I’m considering expanding the game for the jam. All in all, this was lots of fun as usual! The name is dumb-bad but no can do.
The left hind leg doesn’t sync up but otherwise I’m pretty happy with it!