I’m planning on participating in the next Ludum Dare in April with a talented illustrator friend of mine whom I’ve been wanting to work with for a while. I’ve never really done any serious game programming of any kind, only working on little prototypes on my spare time here and there, and I’m grateful that he’s given me the opportunity to work together on something this year despite my inexperience.
What advice would you have for me as a first time game jam participant? Bonus points if it’s applicable to someone who’s never publicly released any game-related code. (I am a full-time Web developer and have dabbled in lots of other unrelated tech in the past, so my own inexperience is gamedev-specific, although if you have broader advice for beginning programmers, I’m sure any of them reading this thread would love to hear it.)
When the theme is announced, figure out the idea you want to make. Then cut it down to its simplest form. Then make it even simpler. Then simplify it one more time.
Figure out your concept, maybe start making it right after the theme announcement, but get some sleep soon after. Get a full night’s rest. Give your mind time to process the theme and your ideas when you’re not actively trying to put them together.
Code That Works means Messy Code Is Fine. Build first, optimize probably never unless you revisit it after the jam.
Post your progress & share it with folks during the jam. Get feedback on it before you have to submit. Extra eyes can help you hone in on something that might make a huge difference.
If you aren’t feeling your idea, don’t be afraid to switch gears, even if it’s in the middle of the jam. Don’t press on doing something you don’t enjoy just to finish.
Scope low. I’m the third person to say it because it’s that important.
Get something moving right away then take a step back, see how hard/how much time/how your partner’s doing etc, and then rescope your project again
Most of my successful fun gamejams have had a schedule attempting to get something going Friday night, something playable Saturday afternoon, and playtest/funtest/adjustments for the last 50% of the time
Other maybe obvious but maybe not things:
Get some rest.
Eat healthy.
Tell your friend what kind of assets you can/can’t use for the jam.
Know how to use the assets you told your friend you can use.
Oh god, unless you’re really magic, a visual novel gamejam is like the hardest thing. Creating compelling content is so much harder than the already difficult task of creating a compelling mechanic.
That said, the bar for visual novel coding is real low, so
Yeah, I’m only planning on using stuff I’ve worked with in the past for this because I don’t want to spend the majority of the jam fighting with new tools.
It’s been a couple years since I’ve messed around with the engine, so I’m planning on warming myself up over the next few weeks by writing little toys in it during my lunch break.
Well, my warm-up idea kinda failed catastrophically after the first week because my nosy coworker kept asking me questions about what I was doing and it never really got anywhere. So that sucks!
Oh yeah I made another one this weekend for Ludum Dare 46 (submission)
It’s a Princess Maker clone with PSO-inspired sci-fi aesthetic. We cut it so close to the deadline that I only got to test 2/7 endings before we had to publish…?
Source code is here. This is probably the most beautiful thing I’ve been involved in creating.