Join us on Twitter and IRC (#ludumdare on Afternet.org) for the Theme Announcement!
Thanks everyone for coming out! For the next 3 weeks, we’ll be Playing and Rating the games you created. You NEED ratings to get a score at the end. Play and Rate games to help others find your game. We’ll be announcing Ludum Dare 36’s August date alongside the results.
New Server: Welcome to the New (less expensive) Server! Find any problems? Report them here.
Some people asked in comments if it’s really possible to “win” the game and keep all embryos alive? Yes, it is possible. I recorded walkthrough GIF to prove it.
Click to view full-size It still requires some luck (digging resources, find a star), but still, it is possible
Need some help? Sure you do! I’ve made a walkthrough for my game to give you assistance on finishing the game — but try to use it at the last resort because it’s more funner that way! For your convenience, I’ve added the walkthrough as a screenshot to the game’s description page so you don’t have to find this post for it. 😀
Haven’t tried or rated “Parallel Worlds?” Now’s your chance!
This jam entry was probably the most complete project we made so far. We had a lot of fun coding this short puzzler over the weekend. If anyone is having trouble solving the levels – we have uploaded a quick walkthrough above. Note that there are multiple solutions to some of the levels.
It is time to help the less reckless players. Here is the first part of the Erase walkthrough, with the solution of the famous Level 4 which stop a large number of players.
Tools used:
Engine: Unity free
Graphics: Photoshop, Flash, SAI
Animation: Anim2d
Sound: FL Studio + Massive VST + Goldbaby drums
The main goal was to field-test my animation system – animation editor and animation playback libraries for Unity.
The animation editor looks like this:
A lot like Flash with layers and nested animation clips, but with float frame values, “bones”/layer hierarchy, double keyframes for sprite changing.
And here’s the usage in Unity:
Fun thing is that you don’t have to manually import textures/sprites for animation, you just drop them into folder named “Sprites” and the system automatically picks them in editor, makes a library in Unity and stores textures into atlases (for now i’m using TK2d for atlas generation, but later i might remove this dependency).
In runtime there are 2 ways of playback – “rigid” – switches frame immediately, and “interpolated” – with possibility to crossinterpolate multiple animations, and overlay multiple animations. Rigid is faster and more useful for simple things like bullets, ui elements etc. Interpolated mode allows to smoothly switch between animations for characters. With overlayed animations in interpolated mode i could make the character shoot in 4 directions while standing, running or jumping, also landing squish was an overlayed animation too, so you could see the character counteracting the landing impact while continuing to run and shoot. And another fun thing is, it can be called with 1 line of code, like:
You can use different shaders and materials in one animation, it will create different meshes during playback, and if you use one material it will use the automatic batching.
Anyway if enough people are interested in this system, i’ll release it later.
I also used my polygon editor with some adjustments:
//that’s how you not use it, since physics only works good with convex polygons
In the last day i was kinda tired and sad, so i decided to screw around with FL Studio for some time, and made a simple electro-screechy thing using 4 Massive channels and funk-drums. I think it gave me motivation to finish at least something playable. It’s the first time i’m doing game music.
Wat left:
– I’ve spent most of the time fixing bugs in animation system, finding a way to correctly sort sprites by depth, learning how to use materials and shaders. In other words i ignored most advices about using only reliable tools that you are familiar with (again).
– I like to do detailed sprites and was anticipating to draw something with shading and stuff.
– The game is too short, with very few game objects and only one level (too little time was spent on actual gameplay, most of it went into technical stuff and debugging).
– There are severe memory leaks (materials and meshes) that i haven’t noticed (due to my poor knowledge of Unity) and that may crash your browser.
– It was too stressful.
Wat right:
– I did fix a lot of bugs in animation system, and made it work.
– I learned how to shader.
– Now i know how not to update procedural meshes and materials.
– I’m still new to Unity, and i’ve learned a lot from this jam.
– I did music.
– I managed to finish something playable, YAY!
Timelapse:
!MINIMAL DISCO WARNING! PROCEED WITH CAUTION!
Here’s a video of me playing & talking about my entry:
Also, if there’s no comment on your entry from me yet, it means I haven’t come across it. I’m rating like mad, so if you want me to drop some wisdom/pain on you feel free to link me your entry & I’ll git right on that.
Okay, I spent the past two days bashing my head against the keyboard trying to encode video directly from my game, Digital Generation. The result? A video walkthrough! It’s also a bit of “developer’s commentary” for the game.
Some of you played my game “Lab Lights,” the game I created for the miniLD #36.
Well if you haven’t seen it yet, it’s a difficult puzzle game where you push around batteries, crates, TNT, and magnets with a main goal of lighting up all the lights in each of the 23 levels in order to get to the last room and turn on the generator!
So here’s what my feedback was like:
When I put it on Newgrounds, it got daily 3rd best flash submission and later front-paged for a few days! A rush of reviews and comments appeared. Many people loved the difficulty of the puzzles. A few people mentioned how rare it is these days to find good puzzle games this hard. A few people compared it with “Chips Challenge” and “Shove It.” MDeathM (on Newgrounds) says, “All in all, a phenomenally challenging and engaging puzzle game. Thank you for this creation.” These words are very nice and I can only thank Ludum Dare for challenging me to make it.
To my surprise, Ryry67dude (on Newgrounds) made an hour long let’s play of it (and rage-quit at level 17) the day after the release! Here’s his video: http://youtu.be/8GMa8hw5aJ8
Unfortunately though, not everyone enjoyed the difficulty level of it. Many people got stuck on level 2 or 7. Some players mentioned I fried their brains, heehee!
Since I recognize how hard these puzzles are (I describe it as brutal), I made a full walkthrough of all 23 levels. Here’s the video: http://youtu.be/XMvwN4WGut8
(You should subscribe to me as well 😉 )
Lastly, some people said I should make a sequel. I was thinking about it lately, and I think it would be a good idea. I have some new gameplay elements that would be cool to add (Lasers and mirrors, differently sized boxes, teleporters, and boulders). If you have any ideas, I’ll be happy to hear them 😀
Thanks for listening to my rambling, and thank you Ludum Dare for another fun experience! If you want, you can rate and review the game in the comments on this post.
– Zanzlanz 😀
Thanks everyone for the feedback thus far on my entry, most notably Daniel X. Moore’s comment about not being able to run Unity on Linux. I’ve put together the above walkthrough of the game from start to finish.
So, for anyone having issues running it or beating it, you’ll get the whole experience here and hopefully still be able to contribute a rating!