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LD39 Game Jam
Author: HS_Dave
- Posted on: 01/08/2017
Post Type: Blog Entry
Ludum Dare 39

I have tons of news about Drop Dimensions, new features and tweaks as the game finally nears completion. I would probably of been putting the finishing touches on some this weekend and writing the (much overdue) blog post about it last weekend.. except something else was happening that weekend.

Ludum Dare #39 - Global Game Jam!



This is the first time I've ever taken part in LD and, as an aside, also my first time working with the Unity engine. I had a complete blast working with my friend Tommy for a 72hr solid stint to see what we could make. The theme for the game jam was "running out of power" and our game is called Zzap.

In Zzap the level contents are randomly generated (for better and sometimes for worse.. but we only had 72hrs!) and the aim of the game is to connect power from the start node to the exit node. The game is played on a grid of sorts and powering each tile costs varying amounts of power. Sometimes getting to the level exit can be quite easy.. but collecting all the points and power nodes is a completely different matter.

The programming was split up between the pair of us fairly evenly. Tommy also went to town working on the music, sfx and UI and is responsible for the awesome power-beam code. I did my best to create our 3D assets, textures and related effects. Having someone who was experienced with Unity and able to answer questions as we worked was a serious boon and I doubt I would of been even half as productive if I had been alone without that!

Tools I personally used for this game were:

Unity 2017 (free)
Visual Studio 2015
Adobe Photoshop CS3
Blender
Notepad++

Tommy uses Reason as his music DAW of choice.

Special mention here for http://realtimeboard.com which was a really useful tool for collaborating remotely! Free for little guys like us too!

I learned a ton of stuff during this experience and I'm REALLY proud of the game we created. We will definitely be refining this game and seeing where we can take it next.

You can check out the project and, if you like, rate it at: Zzap @ LDJAM39

If you just want to see it at its best then you can grab the binary from: Zzap v2 @ googledrive which is a SLIGHTLY more polished version (has a few extra effects etc) that was sadly finished not quite in time for the deadline (I had to go to work on the last day mind!)

Or, finally, here is a youtube video for you.



Now I'm going to go escape screens for a couple of hours, catch some pokemon and find some lunch. Back to normal programming from this evening!