Ludum Dare # 37: First Experience and Participation Experience

January 3 ended the next global competition of high-speed game development called Ludum Dare. Thousands of participants, a storm of emotions, a huge number of fresh ideas and a surge of inspiration from the whole action. A kind of showcase-festival from the world of gamedev, which takes place three times a year for almost 15 years.

In this article I will highlight some points about this event, share with you the first experience and try to explain why participation in Ludum Dare is very useful for everyone who is somehow connected with game-dev. Come get some!

Before the race

Oddly enough, the contest itself was heard a long time ago, but I didn’t want to get involved with it for a number of reasons: difficult, not enough time, the absence of any significant reward, fear of being unnoticed at the end of the list and generally, why waste all this precious time and strength? But this time, all the same decided. And the main theme of the development, chosen by vote, turned out to be to my liking - One Room.
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He began primarily with an introduction to the site and reading the rules. By the way, the translation of the rules into Russian can be found in this article from Comrade PatientZero . The conditions are clearly defined, but whether you comply with them or not is on your conscience. All control over this rests on the shoulders of the judging - the participants of the parade.

A distinctive feature of the site is its democracy towards the user. During the competition, each developer can publish materials regarding their crafts. A kind of public blozhik. True, this time Mike (the organizer) had difficulty moving the site from ludumdare.com to ldjam.com . Apparently, the next Ludum Dare will already be held on ldjam.com, and the majority of publications in social networks regarding the competition are searched by the hashtag #LDJAM.

We start!

The idea for the game arose literally right after the announcement of the subject matter and it sounds scary:
You killed a man in your hotel room tonight. You got rid of the corpse. Now you need to cover the traces of the crime. The main difficulty - to find and get rid of all traces of blood left by the victim throughout the room. Cherry on the cake is a timer that drives you sneaker and adds excitement. This effect is enhanced by gaming events - disturbing music, knocking on the door, the arrival of the police and the neighbor's dog.

Development

First I started with modeling the room and objects of the environment. Since the case had to be started about 8 hours after the official start, the texturing process was discarded due to the potential lack of time. But in the end it turned out quite stylish. The main process of the game is the washing of blood stains. To do this, a shader was written in haste, imitating smearing on the surface.

Then the character controller and the controls were quickly written. For a change, added a pinch of interactivity, such as the ability to pick up pieces of flesh, move objects and the need to wash a rag in the sink. The routine turned out to be the task of arranging all the positions for the camera, which at the end of the game shows where the player left evidence for the police.



Until the very last moment I wanted to catch the end of the compo. Compo is the most Hardcore Mode, where you need 48 hours, without using third-party content and code (we exclude the game engine code and non-content tools) to finish the game and provide the source code. However, he managed only a couple of hours before the end of Classic Jam . In it, the rules of participation are simpler, and for all things 3 days are given. Honestly, it was even to my advantage: I wasn’t ready to take out the written code in a hurry. Shame on you

In general, the development took about 18 tedious hours, but those that are remembered for a very long time. I felt the drive and excitement. I wanted to do as best as possible in the shortest possible time. Maximum efficiency and speed gave the idea that at the same time, a thousand other developers are just as concerned about the development process of their offspring. In this case, no stress, but only pure enthusiasm and creative flight of thought.

Total

At the end of Compo and Classic Jam, a two-week voting process begins. During this time, to evaluate the work of other developers. What is important, if you avoid it - your game will stop appearing on the voting board. I myself rated about 25 games before the end of the vote, which turned out to be very small compared to the other participants, but enough to get into the final list.

The rating is given on a five-point scale in several categories: graphics, sound, relevance, innovation, humor, mood, and enjoyment of the game. True, one of the last two I personally would have removed. And the final grade, judging by my result, is calculated not quite correctly. It seems to me that more evaluations should have a positive effect on the overall result.

And the results are:


35th place in the Classis Jam section and 6th place for the “mood” category. Taking into account the fact that my game was estimated about 30 times, this situation made me very pleased and very surprised. After reviewing the posts on the site after the vote, I stumbled upon the much more modest results of other games, in my opinion worthy of a higher rating. And among them there are truly unique, well-thought out and coolly implemented games. But, as I understand it, most of the assessments are made on emotions. And it seems to me that I was just lucky - my game turned out with a rather alarming atmosphere. And anxiety and fear are still emotions!

Separately, pleased foreign streamers and "Lets-players". To follow the reaction of the person playing your game is priceless.

Should I participate in Ludum Dare?

The scale of the competition is amazing: 2379 games published. If you are a game developer, and no matter, beginner or advanced, then my opinion is definitely worth it! In addition to the positive emotions from the development process that I have already described, there is one more important thing. It lies in the fact that such a concentration of fresh ideas, a variety of approaches to the development of games and simply unique instances can hardly be found anywhere else. Of course, some of the work is not of particular interest. However, in the ointment there will surely be such a spoon of honey, which will definitely help you to be inspired by new ideas. Everything else, it is also quite a working way to light up. In the end, Ludum Dare is an opportunity to test yourself and test your capabilities in combat conditions.

The next, 38 Ludum Dare will start on April 21. At the same time, the anniversary contest is 15 years from the date of creation. Do not miss!

And finally. My personal TOP-5 games from the contest:

1. Walkie Talkie - a brilliant idea and standout compo. It may not quite fit into the theme of One Room, but who said that the topic should be taken literally?
2. Your little human - remember tamogochi? I was delayed for a long time
3. Toddle Topplers - a game for two about karapuz-jocks. Wildly simple, but the sea of ​​positive provided
4. Little Machine - slow and sluggish, but insanely addictive clicker
5. Empty is an amazing puzzle. Until I could not understand how the overlap of the object is calculated by color.