I’d love to hear your thoughts on it because I want to expand it! Any feedback is greatly appreciated!
Ludum Page https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/my-name-is-bunny
I’d love to hear your thoughts on it because I want to expand it! Any feedback is greatly appreciated!
Ludum Page https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/my-name-is-bunny
Here is the (likely incredibly dull) story of how I made my Compo entry, One Room Hotel. As a bonus I also did some stuff with the CSS of the post, hopefully that works out when it gets to the front page.
When I heard the theme, I was not happy. I felt like I had no ideas for the theme, and that it was far too limiting.
Then I realized I had voted for it 😛
My brainstorming process is simple: come up with ideas for the given theme, then come up with themes related to the given theme, then brainstorm based on those. I find doing this is very helpful, as it forces you to look at the theme in different ways, rather than mentally getting stuck on a few ideas. I ended up writing down the idea I was going to use in the section headed “One Room at A Time.”
The idea, as written, was very unclear:
I worked up the design of my game based on this, and it went through a few iterations.
The inspiration for the game actually came from Hot Wheels Drive Through Dilemma, a time management flash game I played a long time ago. I was also thinking about the game SimTower, an inspiration which a couple of people seem to have picked up on.
After I had my full idea, it was time to start work.
One issue that has been common to every Ludum Dare I’ve competed in is a lack of initial confidence in my idea. I always second-guess myself and this compo was no exception.
I especially felt that the sprites I was drawing would not work. I nearly scrapped the idea right there, but my bad experience a year ago with wasting time on a second idea when working on Disphere led me to stick with my original plan.
This uncertainty continued throughout the night, and into the next day.
I finished the day with a post showing people entering the hotel.
When I woke up to start work the first full day, I saw that this was the most “hearted” post I had ever made, with 17 hearts. This is what finally convinced me that this was the idea to work on. If people were responding this well to such a basic illustration of the mechanics, I must have been on to something.
Getting the people to look good was a struggle, and took the better part of an hour and a half. For a while I was worried that I would need to pursue a different graphical style, but I ended up managing it.
When I finished the amenities, the game really started to come together. It started to fell like a real game, and I felt it was time to share what the gameplay was really like. I came up with a simple backstory for the game, and made a post. In a couple hours, this post had 27 hearts.
This post is by far the best received progress update I have ever had, and helped motivate me as I began to add more fleshed-out gameplay.
The next major change to the game was the addition of the day-night cycle. I needed a way to make it clear when a round was going to end and to create a feeling of progression during a stage, and this was the perfect way to do so.
Unfortunately, this somehow managed to be the most time consuming process of the entire project. I struggled with calculating how to blend colors, and with the scripts for doing so in GameMaker Studio. I eventually resorted to trial and error for getting the sky’s brightness right, and used an overlay rather than blending the color.
The ordeal was worth it, though, as it made the world feel more alive and gave the game a much better progression. The progression still wasn’t perfect, however, so I started to brainstorm ways around this.
After the day night cycle, there were still a few issues with the progression of the game. People came and went at any time of day, and rounds had nothing substantial separating them. I fixed this through two changes:
The first was a three part structure to days.
This change in the intensity of the day over time is critical to the feeling of the game. The stress I wanted would have tired the player if it was constant, or even if it was random. Because it happened at a specific time during the day, it created anticipation and gave the player a chance to prepare. This wasn’t perfect, however, as the RNG could throw incredibly difficult situations at the player. This is an issue with all of my games, and it is the main complaint people have with One Room Hotel in particular.
The next feature I added to improve the flow was hotel construction. The time between rounds felt rushed, and I needed another step in order to ease the transition to the next stage.
I thought about what I could add that would fit with the progression of the game, and I realized that adding a screen where you must construct your tower would accomplish three things:
The building screen accomplished all of these things in my mind, and I personally think the blueprint aesthetic during construction looks really cool.
After construction was finished, I squashed bugs and implemented small features for a while before going to sleep, with a near feature complete game ready for polishing on the second full day.
At the start of the second day, I had around 20-30 items on my to-do list, which was just a little bit nerve wracking. I legitimately thought I wouldn’t finish, but I pushed through and just started working despite this worry. Worries like that have hurt my performance in previous events, and I was NOT going to let that happen again.
After all of the panicking, I decided that the most important thing to get done was the user interface. I’ve neglected this somewhat in the past and it has hurt the quality of my games. I spent a few hours on the interface, and tried a few different styles before I settled on what I used in game (and in the styling of this post.)
I also worked on the in-game UI, and got that looking good with a color changing satisfaction meter and an icon for your money (score.)
I wish I had taken the time to make a separate icon for satisfaction, but I was forced to focus on others things.
Something I added that not many people seem to have noticed is the randomly generated hotel and newspaper names. There are thousands of potential hotel names, each generated from an adjective, a noun, and then a type of establishment (Inn, resort, hotel, ETC.)
The newspaper names were a little simpler. They also consisted of three parts, but the first was simply a choice between have “The ” or “” at the start of the name. The next part was a noun, and the third was a type of publication.
I love adding details like this to the game, whether or not anyone notices 😛
Since near the beginning I had ideas for the music of the game. I wanted some medium tempo jazz for the menus, and a really fast tune for in-game. I only had time to implement the menu music, unfortunately. I was disappointed at first, but when I changed the music to play in-game I realized it worked pretty well.
The music was originally intended to be for the menus only.
I made the music using Mixcraft 6 (NOT recommended, very buggy) and midi instruments, along with a (musical) keyboard. To come up with the tune I hummed along with the game when I was testing and recorded it. Once I sang something that I liked I just needed to figure out the notes to actually play it.
I would highly recommend this method to anyone who doesn’t typically write music, as it really saves time and does a lot for quality if you don’t know how to write music. It’s a lot easier to improvise melodies when singing then to mess around with a keyboard until something sounds good.
For me, the final hours of any event are some of the most important. This is where I add a final layer of polish, and elevate the game to the next level of quality. Strangely, what I feel is the most important single change I made on the final day was making the sun better:
The yellow of the sun brings the game’s visual style together, and I think it turned out really well. I don’t know why, but that’s when I really felt like I had made something good. Maybe that’s weird but that’s how I work.
One Room Hotel is the best received game I have ever made. I’m really happy with it, and I’m ecstatic reading people’s reviews.
A few people have called it one of the best games of the event. I never thought I would get to this point in my game development, and I am so happy that people feel this way about my game.
I’m incredibly excited to see how the game places, and I hope to finally break into the top 50 for fun, and maybe even for overall.
I may release a post jam version of the game, fixing some of the issues with it, and it may be coming to Android. I’m not sure at this point, but it is a possibility. I’m more likely to focus on a long-term project I’m going to be working on for FFSJam, a manic shooter.
Thank you so much for reading!
Hello everyone again!
Hope you’re enjoying this Ludum Dare, because… oh, man, there are some amazing games.
So, just like I promised, made a web-version on itch.io.
Here is the game itself.
Also fixed some issues which didn’t let players enjoy gameplay:
So, if you haven’t checked it out yet, go ahead! Have fun!
By the way, it would be nice if you suggested what would you like to see in the game. We are planning to take it further. Thank you! C:
I had a really great time working on this project, I went into the jam wanting to test my solo skills.
I had never made a jam game entirely by myself before, I usually do most of the art for the games I work on.
I created this game with SuperPowers which is uses HTML5, WebGL, and JavaScript.
Play & Rate Today!
(Playable in your browser.)
The Lock is a puzzle adventure game, and my entry for the LD37 jam. Try it out if it inspires you.
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-37/?action=preview&uid=21736
The Lock is a puzzle adventure game. Challenging and interesting. Try it out if you want.
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-37/?action=preview&uid=21736
I had to go to sleep at 4:00 AM yesterday to get the game completed, but I’m happy to say that The Lock, my LD37 game, is in the jam!
The game is a puzzle game. Veryu short, can be completed in a matter of minutes, but it is a fun challenge. Check it out if it inspires you.
You can play The Lock here:
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-37/?action=preview&uid=21736
Hi, I couldn’t finish my two last Ludum Dare compos, so I had to post a game this time, I only had one day but It’s done.
Sorry, my source(capx) is a mess due to the lack of time.
What is unusual? In this version you have to control you pads through your web cam by choosing a color.
Try this game and you’ll see.
Would be great if you’ll comment and let me know what I can improve.
Here is the link
This weekend will certainly be interesting. I’m really hoping for a decent theme to work with, somehow last LDs didn’t really appeal to me.
Since I’m in Germany, Europe I will start later, roughly 4-5 hours after the inital start. Can’t justify staying up that late into the night, especially not being productive at all. (Plus I have work again on Monday.)
If I feel like it I might stream the whole thing over on Twitch, but don’t count on it. 😉
My tools of trade are the following:
Engine: Unity 5 or SuperPowers
Code Editor & Text Editor: Visual Studio, Atom, Notepad++
Audio: Fruity Loops, Audacity, sfxr, Abundant Music
Graphics: Photoshop, 3DS Max
Misc: 2 Monitors (24″ + 22″), Cherry MX-Board 3.0 Mechanical Keyboard with Brown Switches, Xbox 360 Gamepad, M-Audio KeyRig 49 MIDI Keyboard, Coffee, Cats to cuddle with <3
I am looking forward to participating in Ludum Dare 36!
I plan on creating a web-based HTML5 game with Phaser.
Hi everybody!
I’m in! Jean Suie!
It has been quite a time now that I know the Ludum Dare as a silent watcher. But now that I have created a few games, I can entering he jam !
Un petit bonjour à tous mes collègues développeurs francophones!
Tools:
Gamemaker studio pro
photoshop
beepbox.co
Hey everyone,
I’ve just updated my entry, Fugitive Shift. This is the second Post-Compo update.
After the Ludum Dare results, I received a lot of feedback on the game that I kept in mind for this version. Some people would tend to get stuck on the early levels or something would make the game crash, so you can save your game now. I simply added more features and fixes for those who had trouble with the game before. The Game Jolt post can be found here.
Try it out here, tell me what you think! Thanks!
Well holy moly, seeing the results I was like “what, I must be looking at someone else’s game”, but apparently not. Thank you for the votes and the nice comments.
Fun fact: as far as I know, I got the only entry using puzzlescript. It’s kinda sad not to see any other ones, but one commenter said that they’ll try out puzzlescript because of my game, so it evens out