Luckily my 6 week backpacking trip ends just before the LD weekend so I’m happy to say “I’m in!”.

Tools:

Engine: Unity3D

Art: Photoshop, Blender or Paint.NET(for Pixelart)

Sound: sfxr, audacity and maybe some music with FL Studio

Let’s hope the theme is good!

Wish you all a nice LD weekend 😉

Hello!

So I’ve had an idea. My background is in programming, but since I want to focus on the art side this time, why not team up with a programmer?

My art skills are not the best but pretty solid. So if you are a good programmer using Unity3D who just wants to code and not worry about art and doesn’t mind it if the art is not extremely nice looking, shoot me a message(Email: florian.ram@gmail.com).

Here’s a link to my last LD entry where I only spent a small amount of time on the art: http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-31/?action=preview&uid=27145

Have a nice day!

I’m very excited for this LD and I will be participating in the Compo.

This time around I will try to focus on the art side(graphics, sound, story) and if it fits the theme I will opt for something like a first person exploration game.

*prays* Please be a better theme than “Entire game on one screen” and “10 Seconds” *prays*

Tools I will use:

• Unity 5(WebGL export ftw)
• Blender
• Photoshop
• FL Studio + Massive plugin

Hope you all have a fun time making games and I’m looking forward to playing all these awesome games!

Hello Ludum Dare community!

I thought I would do a little post mortem on my game Dust Sorcerer developed in 48 for the compo.

Its an arcade arena shooter where the player controls a dust sorcerer.

Here’s a short youtube video if you don’t want to try the game yourself:

The Good

What I personally really liked in my game was the art. I am no artist and it is therefore pretty hard to get some decent looking game, but the last 2-3 months I had been practicing a lot of drawing and some modelling and it really paid off! Not only did my art get better, I also discovered new aspects of game development. Previously I was focused so much on gameplay mechanics, that I didn’t even notice that gameplay is only a part of a game(others are story, look and feel, even emotions). I would advise every programmer to get a basic understanding of drawing and modelling.

Another aspect I really liked how it turned out was the spellplay. The first spell, a flamethrower, was actually discovered by accident. In the first iteration I implemented a fireball that shoots continously, but I forgot a cooldown on it(e.g. only shoot it every second) so I got this weird ray of fire. I left it at that and increased the size of a fireball over lifetime and it became this amazingly satisfying effect.

The Bad

What I really didn’t do well is balancing. Many people in the comments claimed that the game is too hard for them. This is a big contrast to my gamer friends who said it was just the right difficulty. Next time I should probably think about some sort of difficulty slider so everyone can adjust the difficulty to personal preference or doing more testing with a broader audience would also be an acceptable strategy.

The Ugly

The upgrade system was the last thing I implemented. And I think that is the reason why it turned out pretty boring. I knew I didn’t have the time to implement an awesome upgrade system with spell modifiers(e.g. flamethrower now shoots in 2 directions). I should have planned this a bit more and for many people I can imagine that it got too complicated. There are 8 different upgrades in the game and to unlock all you would need to play many hours and each upgrade doesn’t give a reward worth it. They are pretty boring. They either upgrade damage of some spell by 20% or decrease the cooldown.

Resume

Although I hated the theme, I am still satisfied with the result and think that I learned much about how to design combat.

If you now think you need to play my game, here it is: Dust Sorcerer

I finished my game and I’m pretty happy about how it turned out.

At the start of this gamejam I thought about quitting, but some of you guys encouraged me to continue and it paid off. Thank you!

You can see my entry here: http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-31/?action=preview&uid=27145

And finally here’s a screenshot:

Hey!

This is my first progress update since I was kinda busy building content for the game.

The game now features 4 spells, 4 different enemy types, 9 upgrades and I think its so much fun to play.

Recently I added icons for the spells and now I hope I can add some models for the enemies instead of capsules.

I am streaming at http://www.twitch.tv/kulomin

Can anyone tell me why the “insert link” button doesnt seem to work?

Got some very cool mechanic with a flamethrower in the game. It’s so satisfying to use it

You can watch my stream here: http://www.twitch.tv/kulomin

Good luck to you all!

I am thinking about quitting this gamejam, because the theme for me is utter nonsense.

I want to make a 3D game and the only thing I came up with is a top-down game with 3D graphics.

Still not exactly what I want…

Do you guys have any thoughts on 3d games for this theme?

Hi!

Although we are keeping it small this time we plan to participate in the jam.

Here’s what we are gonna use:

Engine: Unity3D 4.6 beta(gotta love the new UI!)

Art: 3dsMax/Photoshop

Sound: self recorded stuff(Audacity)

Music: either license free one or maybe we can find a musician

So excited!! Don’t wanna wait the last few hours until start.

Hey guys, I’m in.

This will be my first solo jam. Previously I did 2 LDs with a team.

Tools will be:
-Unity 4

-Paint.NET or Gimp(depends on the art style)

-bfxr

-no music tool unfortunately…

I hope I can get some ok looking art together, since I do not have much experience in creating art.

Good luck everyone!