Before the compo commenced, I used my previous experience with game jams including the 11 previous ones I took part in this year to write a set of rules I think other aspiring game devs should follow when they work. Other devs seem to like them so I figured I’d use these rules to go over how I made my Ludum Dare 44 entry, Tank Gauntlet.

These won’t be in the order I originally set them for the sake of describing the progress.

Know your Tools

I already had my tools in mind before the theme was announced, I used my SFML-based C++ engine “Vigilante“, Piskell for animated sprites, Photoshop for any bigger assets, BFXR for SFX and cgMusic with LMMS for music. A lot of which I have used before, but for audio, I feel as though I need to find more other ways to create the SFX I need without the use of a sound library, and maybe diversify my music creativity (I used Megadrive Emulation Soundfonts so there was a bit of a 16 bit vibe to the music).

Small Scope and Stick Mostly with What You Know

I’ve usually been pessimistic the themes for Ludum Dare, as you are given the opportunity to vote on them in multiple rounds but the themes I like the most do not tend to get chosen. Therefore, when the theme was announced to be “Sacrifices must be made”, it wasn’t one that I was entirely keen on, and the only idea I had jotted down was “diet simulator”. While that idea was doable, it wasn’t really that original and a simulator might have been a more laborious task. I slept on it and figured I’d do a tank combat game. To fit the theme and my “1 unique/main, 2 optional mechanics” approach, the unique mechanic would be sacrificing gameplay input for power/speed, with the two optional mechanics being shooting and melee attacks.

Gameplay First

The first thing I did Saturday morning was work on the main game, by setting up a simple tilemap and a rectangle sprite for the player. Then I made sure the player could move, jump and collide with the tilemap, and the player could wrap in all directions.

Oh, a basic tip on how to handle platform jumps: Do math. Don’t bother guessing the right values for acceleration and jump velocity until you get it right, set up some variables and apply some vector maths, the below code will be enough to work out how high and how fast you want to jump, as well as how fast you want the player to move horizontally:

float Height = -85.0f; //Maximum Height of the Jump in Pixels
float Distance = 80.0f; //Distance travelled in Pixels
float Time = 0.5f; //Total Time of Jump
float MoveSpeed = Distance / Time; //Speed in order to travel the set distance in the set time
Player->MaxVelocity = sf::Vector2f(MoveSpeed, -2 * ((2 * Height) / Time));
Player->Acceleration.y = (-2 * Height) / (Time * Time);
Player->Drag.x = Player->MaxVelocity.x * 10;

If you want to extend it further, I’d recommend watching this GDC Talk on Game Maths Programming:

After using the code I have written previously for bullets, tweaking it to my liking, and adding enemy rectangles that can spawn periodically and move at different speed and be of different sides. I had most of what I needed.

I also added knife melee attacks and enemy damage before I worked on the menu that would handle input sacrifice.

Make Your Content Easy and Noticeable

For the last Ludum Dare, I made a racoon sprite that had a full running animation and was heavily detailed to the best of my ability, along with a tilemap and background to resemble a temple, and it took five hours. In the end, the environment didn’t look all that great and the racoon sprite was so small that you couldn’t see the detail.

This time around, I decided I wanted something simpler and easy to resemble, a tank. I loosely based the design on the StarFox Landmaster. With it being a tank, there didn’t need to be many frames.

I decided to keep the sprites and tilemap monochrome, using shading and tones with around 20 shades of grey in total so I could randomize the tint to add some variety to it. The enemies were kept red, as it’s an easy way to convey them as dangerous.

I found using fonts a bit more frustrating than normal, SFML doesn’t use the nearest neighbour for fonts so on a game with a low resolution (Tank Gauntlet uses 320×180), it’s difficult to use a font that isn’t too big and wouldn’t get blurry if the font size wasn’t set to a specific factor, if I found a way to implement bitmap fonts I might not have this much of an issue.

621 and Take a Walk

On both Saturday and Sunday, I walked into the town centre to get food and other things to relax my mind and not stress over the game too much. I also tried to get some good sleep, so I didn’t stay up too late and got up at around 8-9am on each day, oh and I took showers.

Find a Friend

One of the comments I got from this rule is that it doesn’t have to apply to team-based projects, having a friend to look over the game or provide feedback is beneficial to a solo project. As such, I’d like to thank my friend Kris for putting up with me sending him screenshots and asking about ways to make the game feel better and if I’m making the game too cruel or not.

I hope you find this simple process interesting, after doing 12 game jams this year I’m kind of happy this one felt mostly streamlined. There were some issues like with audio, not to mention technical issues post-submission, but I hope people find the final product enjoyable.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/tank-gauntlet-control-vs-power

I was going to include a final statement for 2018 as a year in review here, but with the length of this one I’m going to have to add it as an additional post. Happy New Year everyone!