Dinosaursssssss

I donno if this quite counts, but UnityVS.

Instead of Wizard Jamming this weekend I'm doing Ludum Dare and making this game that's so far entirely about scaring people so they fall out of windows

Ludum Dare 32 is this weekend. I'm planning on doing it. Not sure what I'd like to do yet; I sort of want to do some C++ in UE4 but teaching myself that stuff might be ambitious for a 48 hour jam. http://ludumdare.com/compo/ edit: OK I made this game http://www.funghost.com/partycity/ I'm not super happy with how it came out. I couldn't figure out where I wanted to go with it mechanically so I just doodled a bunch and made dumb stuff. Anyway here's some gifs of it.

It's been a week now, we're just over halfway through the jam. I think there are about 30 games being made, which is a lot! More than I expected, anyway. I've been really enjoying poking through peoples dev logs threads, so keep it up! Also if anyone's feeling really crazy Ludum Dare, the 13-year-running quarterly solo game jam, is this weekend.

I also like the deer can.

Allright this is a build I'm very happy with. Gonna try and force myself to not work on this until Monday so I can catch up on other work. Only exception is that if I get motivated to run the final Blender tutorial in this series and animate the dog I will do that. http://funghost.com/robot-news/alpha/

AI looks like it's coming along really well!

I'm starting to feel like I'm cheating a little bit by being unemployed so I'm gonna do Ludum Dare instead of working more this weekend I think

Ah, yeah, I can almost get them all in one pass that way. I wasn't even trying to get all 3 at once when I was playing around before. There's a sorta satisfying rhythm to trying to do all 3 rows, maybe I'll focus in on that. If you have any suggestions on how I can make that more fun let me know!

Honestly I'm not sure? Maybe I'll create a few different house/street configurations and randomize them. It sort of depends how I implement the 2nd phase of the game, I'm still deciding how I want it to play out. The new version is a little different; you only patrol along the front-right edge. I donno if I'll keep it that way, I was just finding it difficult to aim while on the back left/right edges because the targets face the wrong way. I definitely wasn't able to get them all in one pass, so good job!

Adjusting down the Normal Bias seems to fix it? Thanks! As for killing all humans, we're not talking about that quite yet.

First playable : http://funghost.com/robot-news/FirstBuild edit: hm the colors seem a little off in the web build

Thanks! I will definitely use these. I think I like the 2nd one better.

Still procrastinating on rigging and animating, so I started making this into a game instead. In the gif the newspapers leave a weird trail in the air that you can't see in engine, which actually is kinda neat so I might implement that? Also there's a weird seam or somethin' in my houses that you can see in the shadow, I don't know what to do about that.

With the announcement last week that Unreal Engine 4 is now free*, and Unity 5 will make all its pro features available by default, there has really never been a better time to start learning game development. So let's make some games! I'm sure there are a bunch of folks here who have ideas but are intimidated by showing up to a real life jam with no experience, or have always wanted to learn the tools but needed a little push. I really do think jams are one of the best ways to learn; it's incredibly easy for new developers to wildly over scope projects, and I think having a short window to work on something is a good way to force yourself to think small and not be disappointed with yourself when/if you don't finish. It's low stakes, but there's also no reason you can't continue to build on what you make if you're happy with it. And I'm sure this community will go on to make some really interesting stuff. This would probably need to be on the longer side; most of the jams I've done have been 2 days or a week but since the focus is on learning, I think 2 weeks would be perfect. I'd like to pull together a handful of folks who could act as 'experts' on topics and be available for asking questions and maybe throwing together a quick crash course in their field. This'd probably mostly mean being on IRC and answering questions. I'd probably borrow the rules from the 7DFPS jam. Tools people use would be unrestricted, though if you want to learn something like the Torque engine for example, there will likely be a lot fewer people who can help you out with it. Games also wouldn't have to be Idle Thumbs related, but obviously there is an audience on these forums for your Big Dog horror-comedy that might not exist elsewhere. Before picking a date or anything, I'd like to know...are people interested in this? Would people be willing to do some teaching? Does that format sound good or do folks have suggestions? * I take some issue with a 5% royalty being presented as 'free.' Edit: It's An Itchio April 10 - 24 Theme: Episode Titles! The theme is optional, but also pretty broad, so I imagine you'll be able to fit your idea into one of the 200+ absurd episode names. This page will show you a random episode title (thank you Panzorfork for this) This page has every episode title. Even though the theme is announced, pleaaase don't get started on your jam game yet. Doing this at the same time as a buncha other readers will be more fun for everyone. Never made a game? No idea what engine to use? Try out this sweet tool by Zoe Quinn for figuring out what tools to use. Helpers Dinosaursssssss - Unity, UE4 blueprint, C#/JS/html5. Spenny - Unity clyde - Unity, TyranoBuilder BigJKO - Photoshop zerofiftyone - UE4 undermind - Photoshop / vector art Blambo - GameMaker, general programming elvaq - Unity / C# Deadpan - Twine Looking for Teams Clyde - Unity, Weird Stuff Blambo - Art SuperBiasedMan - Wild Card Coods - Music / Code Simbiotik - Art elvaq - Looking for an artist(s?) Gwardinen - Is a programmer, looking for art Free Tools! Pixel Prospector - Lots of good resources. Engines GameMaker GameSalad Construct2 Unity Unreal Twine Unreal, Twine, Construct2, and GameSalad all have scripting systems that doesn't require writing code. Playmaker ($95) is a visual scripting plugin for Unity that has been highly recommended to me. Art paint.net inkscape (vectors) playscii (ascii) blender (3d modelling) If you're interested in 3D, I also recommend getting the free 3-year student license for Maya. It's an industry standard tool, and only requires that you put in a bogus .edu email address. Audio bfxr (fx) bosca ceoil (Music) audacity (recording/audio editing) If you're interested in learning some basic programming, I highly recommend Code Academy, which will teach you some Javascript. If you need art assets, you can also peep this thread. Or just swing by the Game Development subforum and hang out.

glad to see you're feeling the jam spirit

Still haven't started on rigging/animations, I got carried away with modelling and texturing (which I'm having a lot of fun with!)

I finished the uv and rig tutorials by that guy (which were also solid) and started poking at doing my own stuff. Here's a first attempt at the ground for this game. I think I baked the AO when the normals were inverted. Also the borders on the UVs are a little weird, so I had to tweak them a bit in Photoshop. It is technically progress. I tried rigging this leg yesterday. It did not go well! I'm gonna take another shot at that in the afternoon, and maybe fill in more of the body.

Yeah I finished that first one (modelling) last night and thought it was very good. It ended up taking me a few hours to get through the 23 minute video, but I feel like I have a stronger hold on using Blender than I had last time I poked at it. Next up is texturing, then rigging/animating...then I scrap all of that and start actually working on my game.

For jams, I personally lean towards trying new things over pushing for completeness. That doesn't necessarily preclude working towards a more polished game though; there's also a lot to learn in pushing for completeness, if you've never done that.

I have no idea how to help you but I got a good giggle out of this gif

Clyde has been talking up this tool called TyranoBuilder that seems like it'd be able to do what you're looking for; seems like it supports visuals a little better than Twine and has drag-and-drop visual scripty stuff so you wouldn't need to code. It's not free, but it is fairly cheap ($15). You could also look into Ren'Py which is another visual novel engine (which I think Hatoful Boyfriend was made in?) that's free, though I think everything is set up via text files rather than a drag and drop UI, so it might be more fiddly. edit: Damnit Clyde!!!

The first thing that came to mind to me is that 'spectacle' can refer to both a spectacular event and glasses. So...something based around They Live style spectacles, that make things you look at a spectacle? That might be difficult. I donno. (also you don't have to use the first random one you get, if you don't want!)