Author Topic: Ludum Dare 32: April 17th-20th, 2015 (Read 63,728 times)

Deozaan · « **on:** April 03, 2015, 04:22 AM »

Ludum Dare 32 is fast approaching. Only 14 days until it begins.

This thread can be used for any and all discussion of LD32 and the games that result from it. I've entered the past three LD Jams, but felt severely burned out after the last one, so I don't know if I'm going to enter this time or not. We'll see what happens.

But in the meantime, the Theme Slaughter is going on right now! Go vote on themes you like. Slaughter the themes you hate.

See previous DC posts about Ludum Dare:
Ludum Dare 31 - (I made Worm Wars during LD31)
Ludum Dare 30 - (I made Planetary Devourers during LD30)
Ludum Dare 29 - (I made It Came From... Beneath!! during LD29)
Ludum Dare [29] topic for other games - A thread about LD29 games.
Ludum Dare 23 - (I made Be Tiny, World! during LD23, and continued to work on it and improve it for years afterward!)
Ludum Dare - Game Programming Challenges

Deozaan · « **Reply #1 on:** April 12, 2015, 07:22 PM »

Voting for the theme has begun!

http://ludumdare.com/compo/2015/04/11/ludum-dare-32-theme-voting-begins/

TaoPhoenix · « **Reply #2 on:** April 12, 2015, 09:39 PM »

Heh I don't get enthused about voting, but it also means it's that much closer! So if I busy-beaver myself and do Stuff, and get a bit of it out of my way, then I might be able to celebrate with a couple of LD review days! : )

Deozaan · « **Reply #3 on:** April 18, 2015, 01:03 AM »

The theme for LD32 is: An Unconventional Weapon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8H1jUvqJFE

See you all in ~72 hours. I'm going to give it a shot.

TaoPhoenix · « **Reply #4 on:** April 18, 2015, 03:18 AM »

Let's hear it for Team DoCo!

Deo of course, as above. A couple of the other guys were considering it.

I'm gonna start scouting a bit on the early materials.

TaoPhoenix · « **Reply #5 on:** April 18, 2015, 04:20 AM »

First one I'll really want to watch!

http://ludumdare.com/compo/2015/04/17/not-your-grandmas-chess/

[attachimg=#]

It doesn't seem like Grandma's chess went anywhere.
: (

TaoPhoenix · « **Reply #6 on:** April 18, 2015, 04:27 AM »

This is the first time I have been wandering around looking at stuff in the very early stages.

This post has one of the first big lists that might be useful for people brainstorming stuff, even past LudumDare.

http://ludumdare.com/compo/2015/04/17/weapon-ideas-ldjam/
(Slightly edited by me)

Infectious Agent: a restaurant owner is trying to poison the right spy without killing customers.
Kite a Giant: lure a large monster toward a city/castle/friend’s cooler treehouse/etc
Sunlight Focused: kill a neighbor’s flowers with beams of concentrated sunlight
Food Fight: a cafeteria featuring students with ridiculous weapons, such as mashed potato guns and banana missiles.
Toys: inspired by the Robin Williams movie, in which wind-up toys fight (I recall this is a multi-decade old game already).
Information Warfare: choose which important papers to shred in order to leak secrets.
Books: check out books from a library before your coworker does to prevent him/her from getting that promotion.
Numbers vs Letters: it’s a battle between the higher level and abstract thoughts!
Shapes: an RTS inspired by the different shapes in Flatland.
Monopoly: use market pressures to defeat your competitors.
Avalanche/Cave-in: cause a disaster to trap other people.
Cactus vs Balloon: inspired by some art in my room.
Nanotechnology: tiny invaders that destroy your enemies from the inside out.
Mind Control: make your opponents do self-destructive things.
Fear: scare people towards disaster (for them, obviously).
Vampire Hunter: use blood disease to kill vampires.
Eggs: birds hatch and peck at opponents.
Plunger: you’re a plumber, and you have to save the day.
Hopes, Dreams, Aspirations, and Fears: you work in HR at Large Corporation, Inc.

I also tried to come up with a list of potential weapons:

Gravity Wells
Vacuum cleaner
Air guns
Summon beings, such as demons
Weather
Ever increasing mass
Paper cuts
Candy
Innocence
Music
Laundry (dirty or otherwise)
Humor
Banana peels

TaoPhoenix · « **Reply #7 on:** April 18, 2015, 04:52 AM »

Free Music "Assets" - I never knew there is some nice free music offered as resources for people making games.

Edit: I was going to post a few of those sources here, but maybe not as it stands for a while.

TaoPhoenix · « **Reply #8 on:** April 20, 2015, 04:54 AM »

Okay, so the Compo side is over, by a good chunk of hours as I start this session of gaming! Maybe a couple of writeups will be up too.

I'm rested, I have the food groups! (Coffee, Monster and Pepsi and Orange Crush, Ice Cream, and Ziti!)

So let's go gamiiiiiiing!

The basic Compo page with lots of blogs/writeups/etc.

http://ludumdare.com/compo/

The Ludum Dare "official" selector - but this shifts every day as it re-orders the games! But it's mostly static into itself.
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-32/?action=preview

There's an itch.io page that covers one compo's worth of games but it flips over every time a new compo is held every four months and so on.

TaoPhoenix · « **Reply #9 on:** April 20, 2015, 05:32 AM »

Some quick reviews:
-------------------------------

Clarinetto
A fun little very short platformer. It's got mid level graphics, but a really gorgeous soundtrack!
It has no life counters, no time limits, and very generous save-states. So this one is Phoenix-Easy. Windows download.

Game page:
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-32/?action=preview&uid=30672

Screenshot link:
http://ludumdare.com/compo/wp-content/compo2//444368/30672-shot1-1429494925.jpg-eq-900-500.jpg

------------------

Unconventional Earth

I have a soft spot for these "little strategy" games. This has a somewhat similar feel to one from last time in that it has about three strategy elements, and a little bit of "taking control of the initiative" will work. But the AI's on these aren't so bad - if you miss the timing and end up on the wrong side of the flow, you can lose!

Basic tip - start reactive, and then push for the opening to get about four tornadoes going in tandem, which wipes out about everything the opponent can do. Then you can upgrade your base to earn the Tsunami, and put in a couple of those to close out the win. (You can do it with tornadoes and lightning alone, but this is the more "thorough" win.)

This game is Phoenix-Easy.

The web game page:
http://www.kongregate.com/games/nirkingking/unconventional-earth

The Ludum Dare entry page:
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-32/?action=preview&uid=40141

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TaoPhoenix · « **Reply #10 on:** April 20, 2015, 01:38 PM »

Slow Extinction

An interesting "little brother" to a Tower Defense style game. The enemy aliens travel only on a certain diagonal path, so this suggests a winning strategy of planting your crop fields in the corners.

After a couple of early rounds just getting the initiative, then you slam on the accelerator by upgrading all your turrets and planting lots of fields. I don't know exactly what the final triggers of a win are, but somewhere in that range where the aliens stop damaging you and you have a lot of fields going works.

The LD page:
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-32/?action=preview&uid=42283

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TaoPhoenix · « **Reply #11 on:** April 20, 2015, 02:26 PM »

As much a reminder to me as anything else, this is the entry by the same dev who made Undermined a while back. Though early playtesters are saying that it's a little unfocused.

Star Power
by NickMakesGames - Compo Entry

http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-32/?action=preview&uid=29805

I'll look at it sometime when I am awake and ready to do some more gaming math!

Deozaan · « **Reply #12 on:** April 21, 2015, 05:28 AM »

Phew! Ludum Dare 32 is officially over. Now there will be about 3 weeks of playing/rating games before the final results are announced.

I submitted my entry a few hours ago, then went out to eat dinner to celebrate. I'll post a more thorough write-up of my experience with this LD later, but the short of it is this:

This one started out rather frustrating, and I ended up scrapping about 3-4 ideas (after spending precious hours on each of them!) and I even gave up a couple of times. Shortly after I gave up For Reals^TM, I had another idea and decided to try it out. It ended up working for me, though by then most of my available free time had been used up on the scrapped ideas. Therefore, this one is really rough and not very polished. That said, it's still a success and I feel pretty good about the outcome.

Here's a link to my entry:

[attachimg=#]
http://ld32.deozaan.com/

And don't forget you can browse all entries here:
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-32/?action=preview

Though I prefer the look and organization of the entries as listed here:
http://ludumdare.itch.io/

mouser · « **Reply #13 on:** April 21, 2015, 05:31 AM »

I played your entry, Deo, and I enjoyed it! I even beat it. The damn robots scared the hell out of me. I think you did a great job with the theme.

And thanks for sharing the experience with the rest of us.

TaoPhoenix · « **Reply #14 on:** April 21, 2015, 12:31 PM »

And I'm going to take a break for a couple of days on this too! I got just what I wanted - to dive into the thick of things, rather than waiting for Monday.

It's not clear if there are any "runaway-hits" for me in this set. I found a fun little tower defense about poultry birds on a farm, which will at least get a quick writeup. But I figured out an "artful pattern" pretty quick, and then my computer couldn't handle past level 19, so I took a screen shot and then had to close it down.

Elsewhere in the more "tech" threads we've talked a bit about benchmarking, and we might have a case here. Someone on the LD page said it slowed his laptop down by about wave 12. My project comp barely completed level 19 before it gave up and I shut the program down. So it might be worth a footnote as a benchmark test. (Edvard! Remember what we were chatting about in the chat room?)

But the rating will go on for about three weeks! And maybe in a couple of days the devs will wake up from exhaustion and see my notes and we might get a couple new members from my doings!

Deozaan · « **Reply #15 on:** April 21, 2015, 09:27 PM »

Quote from: mouser on April 21, 2015, 05:31 AM

I played your entry, Deo, and I enjoyed it! I even beat it. The damn robots scared the hell out of me. I think you did a great job with the theme.

Thanks! I appreciate the feedback.

Quote from: TaoPhoenix on April 21, 2015, 12:31 PM

I found a fun little tower defense about poultry birds on a farm, which will at least get a quick writeup. But I figured out an "artful pattern" pretty quick, and then my computer couldn't handle past level 19, so I took a screen shot and then had to close it down.

No links or screenshots?

TaoPhoenix · « **Reply #16 on:** April 22, 2015, 01:01 AM »

Quote from: Deozaan on April 21, 2015, 09:27 PM

No links or screenshots?

Heh I have those, but I ran out of steam before I could assemble the post! I'll put them up when I swing back into Ludum mode again!

(Plus, (I think) the pattern is the win, so how much of a spoiler do y'all want?)

TaoPhoenix · « **Reply #17 on:** April 22, 2015, 01:20 PM »

Okay, I think I am ready for a more detailed post on this!

Egg Defender is a cute little Tower Defense game where you should place defensive birds to stop woodland animals from stealing your home base eggs.

The LD Page:
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-32/?action=preview&uid=49573

The Web version of the Unity game page:
http://pettermoen.com/ld32/

Note: The Windows version is *not* recommended at this time because it's giving me *random* enemy spawns! That's not playing fair for tower defense! I posted a note on the LD page. I don't know what will become of that - depending on the other non-web versions that could affect its ratings a little.

So my strategy notes (only partial! I only want to give tips, not a "full solution" at this time!)
- I used the bare mininum hens allowed until I was able to buy Turkeys, and those became the Workhorse defenders. The Penguins looked balanced too weak to do any good.

- The Ostrich produces a "bomb" egg that works best after the basic defenses are covered. I consider it a "closer" to seal wins on higher levels.

- The eggs don't seem to always go for the "most dangerous" / farthest advanced enemies. So I used a series of turkeys way at the top where they "can't be distracted".

(Also, I can't prove the full win because I don't know how many levels there are, and this game has some weak coding that tends to grind down comps at higher levels. I'd appreciate a couple of data points if anyone tries the game.)

Here's a couple of screen shots showing a partial strategy suggestion, but not quite the full win.

This is what can happen if you get too greedy and buy the "power ostriches" too fast - you get overrrun by the minions.
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This is my suggestion for a better strategy - make sure the rush of minions is much more in control before sealing the deal with ostriches.
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mouser · « **Reply #18 on:** April 23, 2015, 02:41 AM »

Quote

power ostriches

Deozaan · « **Reply #19 on:** April 27, 2015, 10:40 PM »

Thanks for posting your reviews. I played all the ones you linked in here.

Quote from: TaoPhoenix on April 20, 2015, 01:38 PM

Slow Extinction

The LD page:
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-32/?action=preview&uid=42283

I found a bug that made this one really easy. You can buy tower upgrades even if you have no money!

Deozaan · « **Reply #20 on:** April 27, 2015, 10:48 PM »

Here's one called Troll Smakkin', by a collaboration called Shimmergloom:

[attachimg=#]

Quote from: http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-32/?action=preview&uid=51106

This was our first ever ludum dare, it was lots of fun. Our take on an unconventional weapon is a shovel-axe that you can use to chuck blocks behind you or damage your enemies.

Any block that is chucked will carry the object on top of it too! Chucking cacti will cause them to explode and spawn new cacti. The trolls chase you during the night but at dawn they turn to stone. Petrified trolls drop hearts when they die.

See how many days you can survive!

It's a good looking game. I found the controls awkward, and it cramped up my hand/wrist while I was trying to play.

Deozaan · « **Reply #21 on:** April 28, 2015, 09:13 PM »

I just finished a writeup of my Ludum Dare 32 experience:

[attachimg=#]
Ludum Dare 32 - A Postpartum

Quote from: http://blog.deozaan.com/2015/04/24/ludum-dare-32-a-postpartum/

Ludum Dare 31 was not a pleasant experience for me. When it ended, I was so glad to be done with it that I didn’t even do any of the post-competition things, such as play and rate other games. I had lost all motivation and enthusiasm for the game jam. I didn’t bother to check for feedback on my own game (which mostly went unnoticed due to the way the site organizes the entries from people like me who don’t participate in post-competition activities). As I write this now, I still haven’t even written about my LD31 experience on this blog (though I’ll probably do that in the near future and retroactively date the post to something closer to when LD31 took place).

Considering how unmotivated I was to do any game programming related things after LD31, I wasn’t sure I even wanted to participate in LD32. I was concerned that it would ruin my motivation again and it would just stress me out too much. But as the starting date for LD32 came closer and closer, I found my enthusiasm increasing. Though I hadn’t fully committed to the idea of participating in LD32, I decided to make my final decision after finding out how I felt about the theme.

You can read the rest here:

http://blog.deozaan.com/2015/04/24/ludum-dare-32-a-postpartum/

mouser · « **Reply #22 on:** April 28, 2015, 09:42 PM »

I have two comments after reading your postpartum writeup:

1. It's great fun to read these things and to experience the process vicariously.
2. Writing such things is such a good habit to get into for those serious about becoming good coders.
3. Participating in these kinds of projects that force you to conceive and then complete something "finished" with a real deadline is again such a great skill to get into the habit of.

In summary: great work, keep it up.

Deozaan · « **Reply #23 on:** April 28, 2015, 09:51 PM »

Quote from: mouser on April 28, 2015, 09:42 PM

I have two comments

Quote from: mouser on April 28, 2015, 09:42 PM

1. It's great fun to read these things and to experience the process vicariously.
2. Writing such things is such a good habit to get into for those serious about becoming good coders.
3. Participating in these kinds of projects that force you to conceive and then complete something "finished" with a real deadline is again such a great skill to get into the habit of.

Thanks mouser! I really appreciate your encouragement.

tomos · « **Reply #24 on:** April 28, 2015, 10:37 PM »

Quote from: Deozaan on April 28, 2015, 09:13 PM

You can read the rest here:

http://blog.deozaan.com/2015/04/24/ludum-dare-32-a-postpartum/

great job -
it's pretty inspiring.

Quote

I don’t know why, but somehow the very act of giving up altogether on LD32 filled me with inspiration. I had moved on physically, but my mind couldn’t think of anything else. I was excited about this new idea! I could hardly wait to finish showering so I could get back to my computer and see if it worked as well in practice as it did in my mind.

Interesting how often you hear of things working out -
or, as in this case, you getting the good idea, after one has given up.

And I loved the video with music -
well done all round!