I just saw it has been 3 years already since my last post. Blogging is hard, so what better way to come back than another report from Ludum Dare! The last one I attended was number 34, if you read it backwards you end up with 43, which is cool but it also means I missed eight Ludum Dares.
How it started
It's not easy finding the time when you are all grown up and constantly have things on your mind that seem very important and prevent you from disappearing for three days working on a game.
I saw the announcement on Facebook that there would be a physical jam site for LD43 at TU Wien. Usually people are participating from home which is not ideal because of the usual distractions. I immediately texted Peter and asked him if he wanted to do this. I'm talking about Peter Sperl, the extremely talented pixel artist who was part of so many jams before including the one where we did Llama in your Face, back in 2011!
The jam took place from Dec 1st - 3rd, 2018. What follows is a somewhat overdetailed and probably not entirely accurate account of what happened.
Day 1
When the day of the jam came however, Peter was sick. He was totally prepared to do the jam though, both his dog and his girlfriends were out of town. He just didn't want to go outside so I went to TU Wien alone. On the way Peter messaged me the theme: "Sacrifices must be made". I was almost at the place when I got the incredible idea of re-using one of my Fatmage concepts for the jam. I arrived just in time for the brainstorming session and joined a random table, eager to present this awesome idea about a little fat kid who meets a leech pig that helps him to get rid of his excess body fat, just to realize that leeching his fat gives the pig major depression resulting in him having to slaughter it so it doesn't have to suffer anymore. Florian and Julia, the two people at the table didn't love my concept but where polite enough not to say anything. Peter also didn't like it when I told him over Skype, he was also worried people would not "get" it as it's a complex story and there was only so much time to develop it.
In total there were about 15-20 people at the jam if I remember correctly, including a student from one of my game programming classes at HTL Spengergasse. The atmosphere was pretty productive, the crowd were really nice people, and the organizer, Simon, did a really great job introducing the jam and making sure everyone had a great time. There were snacks, a coffee machine and water boiler as well as power and internet for everyone - just the infrastructure and no bullshit like, I don't know, a livestream, or celebrity guests, like on certain other gamejams. A big shoutout to the organizer at this point, and also proof that people named Simon are generally awesome.
Since I had to sacrifice -haha, get it?- my first concept, I made up two other ideas on the spot, and one of them got some attention: A balloon/zeppelin where you have to throw some people overboard to avoid losing altitude. Florian was all for it and Peter too, after I filled him in over Skype. Julia thought it was fun, but she wanted to do something more story-based, on her own, using Twine. One by one the teams presented their idea in front of the crowd, and before we even got to it another group had already gotten their balloon idea out. Thinking about it, it's a pretty obvious choice considering the theme. We still presented our idea, and since I couldn't manage to join the two teams together, we decided to just roll our own balloon game and make it better than the other one.
Some discussions and a short Skype call later, Julia was out, but Florian was still on board. I convinced him to leave the jam site and go to Peter's place so we could all jam together. On the way Florian told me he hadn't gotten any sleep the night before because he had been DJing at the Mathefest. As you can imagine it didn't take long for him to crash on Peter's couch, but before that we had managed to set up a Git repo, discuss some ideas and start implementing the prototype.
So we had to continue without him for the time being. To my amazement, Florian woke up a few hours later and continued working like nothing had happened. Naturally it took him a while to get up to speed, but after that he made valuable contributions to the game.
Day 2
On the second day, a Sunday, Peter agreed to finally leave the house and meet us at TU Wien, where I could introduce him to everyone else participating. We made some progress and got great feedback from everyone involved.
I also took some breaks to talk to people, which is something I really enjoy. I mean, hey, a gamejam might just be the exact opposite of a lame party with too much small talk. Almost everyone there was really nice, interested in computer games, and above all, motivated to create something on their own. I can't imagine a better crowd.
At the end of Day 2 we had a somewhat working game with no real ending and without music/sfx, and we were also really tired. It sounds like a miracle, but my seminar on Monday had been cancelled during that weekend, Peter still had Monday off because of him being sick and Florian didn't have any important plans either. It was pretty clear we would continue working on the game for a third day. A Whatsapp group was created to coordinate the details. On the way home we agreed to meet again at Peter's place at 9am. When I arrived home it was almost midnight so all I had to do was drop into bed and get some much-needed sleep.
Day 3
Reconstructing from our chatlogs, I arrived almost on time that third day, while it took Florian until 1pm. Well, I was talking to him on the phone in the morning to make sure I got his number right, but he got back to sleep after that and we weren't able to reach him until noon.
The third day might have been the most productive one of them all though. Everything was already set into place, we were just working on additional features, and generally polishing the heck out of our little creation. Peter contributed a couple sound effects and a music track - if you listen closely you might find out it was recycled from Paperguy, another jam game by Peter and I. We also ordered Chinese takeout which is almost like a tradition by now since we had done it so often while working on the Llama game back in the day.
In the afternoon, Peter had to throw us out because he needed to meet up with his girlfriend if I remember correctly. By that time I needed a break anyway, and the game was in pretty good shape. I also needed to prepare some stuff for school - being a teacher and all. Florian however was still keen to work on the game some more, so I invited him back to my place where we set up our laptops at the dinner table. I disappeared for a bit to the bedroom to get my things in order for the next day and then joined him again.
I also invited Peter to come join us after his thing. He preferred to work from his home, but we were in steady contact over the internet. The deadline was at 3am so we still had plenty of time for some refinements. At that point we didn't add any more features, it was just polishing. We added a logo to the beginning of the game, a win screen when you finally manage to get across the ocean, and got rid of many little bugs and annoyances. Peter was mostly adding and editing sound effects.
Naturally this last session, just before the deadline, was the most intense experience of the whole jam. I could feel Peter's exhaustion even though he wasn't physically sitting next to me, yet he was still pushing for getting those small details right that would make the game stand out.
To give one example of this meticulous attention to detail, at 11pm Peter pointed out he did not like the sound effect when you drag a person into a mine, since the explosion sound effect did not mix well with the splatter sound effect. He made a new sound effect that I then hooked up and at the same time made sure the regular sound effects for splatter and explosion would not be triggered in this special case. Make sure to compare the propeller splatter and the explosion splatter sfx when you play the game the next time! ❤
It was a wise choice for us to end the jam around midnight even though we theoretically had until 3am. I had to get up at 6am the next day and go to school.
One week later
One week later, Simon (the Jam organizer, not me!) hosted another event where we could present the final product of the jam. It was just the participants and some close friends, in total less people than at the main event one week before.
While Peter couldn't be there, Florian surprised me with a really cool setup where he taped two red balloons to his laptop screen to match the theme of the game.
The atmosphere at the event was friendly, most people were genuinely interested in the games. It was really exciting for me to try the games of the other participants, too. There now is a page on itch.io listing the entries made on site at TU Vienna.
Results
After each Ludum Dare jam there is a 4-week period where participants can comment and rate each game. While the comments are public, the ratings are not revealed until the end. We got a ton of positive comments, and we expected good ratings as well, hoping for a place in the top ten maybe?
The final result is a bit underwhelming, but still an accomplishment. The competition was simply too good, kudos to that! We made 25th place overall. Our best rating was in the "Fun" category where we scored 19th place, the worst was the "Mood" category where we scored 125th place.
One other game from Vienna stands out in the final rankings. It's called "PhotoSheep" and got first place in the "Innovation" category. Why, you might ask? Because it's implemented as a Photoshop plugin. Some words by the author: "Sacrifices must be made so i decided to sacrifice the game engine and use Photoshop to run my code."