Ludum Dare #27 (August 2013)
Since doing #23 over a year ago, I'd been wanting to do another Ludum Dare. However University just continued to demand more and more of my time. I wanted to do the best I could on my course and so didn't want too many distractions.
I noticed LD27 was coming up towards the end of the summer. I was about to embark on my Masters course which I knew would be very demanding and felt it was a good time to return to Ludum Dare for a cheeky 48 hours.
While I didn't have two shifts at a nightclub to contend with this time, I did go skydiving on the starting day. Skydiving really takes it out of you so I was immediately tired before even starting: not ideal!
The theme was 10 seconds. What a delightfully interesting theme. My immediate idea was to have a platformer where you collect an item within 10 seconds and the quicker you collect it, the more points it will add to your score. Then, the level will move around and a new point will spawn, this time in a more challenging place. This would continue indefinitely until you didn't get the point in time.
However, having just flung myself out of a plane at 11,000ft not 3 hours previous, I wanted to do a skydiving game. Well, why not both? I mused. I decided it would be a good idea to make multiple games in the 48 hours I had. Only two games however would feel slightly jarring, so I needed a third game idea. I was with my family at the time of the Jam and so delegated the task of coming up with an idea to my younger brother, while I carried on with the other games. I was back on Gosu but quickly realised I hadn't touched it in over a year so a quick refresher was in order. I then started with the skydiving game, as I was most enthused for that. The idea is that you press a button to start the dive, count to 10 and then open the parachute. The closer to 10 seconds you are, the higher your score. The catch being, if you pull too late (>10 seconds) then your chute will fail to open and you'll meet an unsatisfactory end.
This wasn't too difficult to create and upon creation I had a 3rd Game. My brother had an interesting and, suitably for his age, immature game idea. I was devoid of sleep at this point and so happily adapted his idea into a game that could work. What I ended up with was, (with varying difficulties) up to 12 square rooms, each with a door and randomly rotated a multiple of 90 degrees. The player has 10 seconds to find the door with the toilet in. Failing results in an explosive fail state, one that I was pleased got some surprised laughs. I was doing well for time, I still had a good amount of hours left for the third game, the platformer.
Unfortunately, it wasn't as simple as I had hoped. I could not for the life of me get the platforms to work correctly and I was out of time: I had 3 hours left. I couldn't believe how quickly I went from comfortable and confident to panicked and hysterical. I decided to slightly change the idea to something simpler. Now, the player is on a jetpack and they have to collect the objects. It wasn't as interesting but it at least worked. I didn't manage to get sound in this time, which was a shame, but I was really pleased with not only getting 3 games made in 48 hours, each with their own take on the theme, but also that they were all playable, worked (relatively) bug free and were actually quite fun.
If you wish to try out the submission, click here
I noticed LD27 was coming up towards the end of the summer. I was about to embark on my Masters course which I knew would be very demanding and felt it was a good time to return to Ludum Dare for a cheeky 48 hours.
While I didn't have two shifts at a nightclub to contend with this time, I did go skydiving on the starting day. Skydiving really takes it out of you so I was immediately tired before even starting: not ideal!
The theme was 10 seconds. What a delightfully interesting theme. My immediate idea was to have a platformer where you collect an item within 10 seconds and the quicker you collect it, the more points it will add to your score. Then, the level will move around and a new point will spawn, this time in a more challenging place. This would continue indefinitely until you didn't get the point in time.
However, having just flung myself out of a plane at 11,000ft not 3 hours previous, I wanted to do a skydiving game. Well, why not both? I mused. I decided it would be a good idea to make multiple games in the 48 hours I had. Only two games however would feel slightly jarring, so I needed a third game idea. I was with my family at the time of the Jam and so delegated the task of coming up with an idea to my younger brother, while I carried on with the other games. I was back on Gosu but quickly realised I hadn't touched it in over a year so a quick refresher was in order. I then started with the skydiving game, as I was most enthused for that. The idea is that you press a button to start the dive, count to 10 and then open the parachute. The closer to 10 seconds you are, the higher your score. The catch being, if you pull too late (>10 seconds) then your chute will fail to open and you'll meet an unsatisfactory end.
This wasn't too difficult to create and upon creation I had a 3rd Game. My brother had an interesting and, suitably for his age, immature game idea. I was devoid of sleep at this point and so happily adapted his idea into a game that could work. What I ended up with was, (with varying difficulties) up to 12 square rooms, each with a door and randomly rotated a multiple of 90 degrees. The player has 10 seconds to find the door with the toilet in. Failing results in an explosive fail state, one that I was pleased got some surprised laughs. I was doing well for time, I still had a good amount of hours left for the third game, the platformer.
Unfortunately, it wasn't as simple as I had hoped. I could not for the life of me get the platforms to work correctly and I was out of time: I had 3 hours left. I couldn't believe how quickly I went from comfortable and confident to panicked and hysterical. I decided to slightly change the idea to something simpler. Now, the player is on a jetpack and they have to collect the objects. It wasn't as interesting but it at least worked. I didn't manage to get sound in this time, which was a shame, but I was really pleased with not only getting 3 games made in 48 hours, each with their own take on the theme, but also that they were all playable, worked (relatively) bug free and were actually quite fun.
If you wish to try out the submission, click here
What Did I Actually Do?
I created a set of 3 mini-games within 48 hours. Each mini game had a different take on the competition's theme "10 seconds"