





This week's cold take is early, unusual, and short because Ludum Dare is this weekend. Ludum Dare is a game jam: an event where individuals or teams of people make games in a short period of time. They tend to run for a few days to a whole week, depending on the jam, and teams are given a short prompt or "theme" to incorporate into the game. There are many game jams these days, I just do Ludum Dare for the schedule and because I like rating other peoples' at the end.
Everyone with an interest in making games should give game jams a go. The actual event only takes a weekend, although a bit of upfront investment to find an appropriate engine goes a long way. The barrier to entry is fairly low, and I even think game jams are a great way to learn certain aspects of programming and design. A jam is a microcosm of project management, where choices made at the start of a project tend to come back to bite you at the end. This process is particularly instructive when there are only three days between the choices and their consequences. And by the end, you get a game out of it.
I especially recommend game jams to anyone working on a long-term game, such as Zero-K, because speedrunning the whole process can clarify your progress on the longer game. It also lets you experiment with new ideas and flex your creativity, which probably helps prevent feature creep. Besides, making games is a matter of practise, and as the Go master said to the game designer: "make your first fifty games quickly".
I got involved in game jams through the Spring Cabal, a group of Spring developers that used Spring in several Ludum Dares between 2015 and 2018. The release pages for most of them were lost in the LD site rework, but builds can still be found in the organisation's GitHub repositories. Dominic (aka Shadowfury333) was also kind enough to document most of them on his YouTube channel.
- LD 32 - Gravitas
- LD 33 Warmup - Hunted
- LD 33 - Area 17
- LD 34 - FLove
- LD 35 - Parts Needed
- LD 43 - To The Last Drop
- Seeds of Civilisation is a bit like asteroids, but with planets and space police.
- Vivere Computatrum is a take on simple colony management, and even has a goal.
- Regular Railway is the most puzzle-like: Pipe Dream but Trains.
- Warp Trash Flotilla is absolute mayhem.
- Crocodial is about spinning a wheel of spells as fast as possible, but you are the wheel.
- Compact Domain is another puzzle game, this time pretending to be a city builder.
- Euclid's Elementals can be hard to get into, but the payoff is you get to feel like a wizard.
- To The Last Drop lets you be an "evil" wizard, and shows off what you can do with Spring.

Index of Cold Takes
[ 2024-10-04 15:46:03 CET ] [ Original post ]
Commander wanted! Construct giant robots, build an army of a thousand Fleas. Move mountains if needed. Bury the enemy at all cost!
- Traditional real time strategy with physically simulated units and projectiles.
- 100+ varied units with abilities including terrain manipulation, cloaking and jumpjets.
- 70+ mission galaxy-spanning campaign to be enjoyed solo or co-op with friends.
- Challenging, (non-cheating) skirmish AI and survival mode.
- Multiplayer 1v1 - 16v16, FFA, coop. ladders, replays, spectators and tournaments.
- PlanetWars - A multiplayer online campaign planned to start in May.
- Really free, no paid advantages, no unfair multiplayer.
Fully Utilized Physics
Simulated unit and projectile physics is used to a level rarely found in a strategy game.
- Use small nimble units to dodge slow moving projectiles.
- Hide behind hills that block weapon fire, line of sight and radar.
- Toss units across the map with gravity guns.
- Transport a battleship to a hilltop - for greater views and gun range.
Manipulate the Terrain
The terrain itself is an ever-changing part of the battlefield.
- Wreck the battlefield with craters that bog down enemy tanks.
- Dig canals to bring your navy inland for a submarine-in-a-desert strike.
- Build ramps, bridges, entire fortress if you wish.
- Burn your portrait into continental crust using the planetary energy chisel.
Singleplayer Campaign and Challenging AI
Enjoy many hours of single player and coop fun with our campaign, wide selection of non-cheating AIs and a survival mode against an alien horde.
- Explore the galaxy and discover technologies in our singleplayer campaign.
- Face a challenging AI that is neither brain-dead nor a clairvoyant cheater.
- Have some coop fun with friends, surviving waves of chicken-monsters.
- Cloaking? Resurrection? Tough choices customizing your commander.
Casual and Competitive Multiplayer
Zero-K was built for multiplayer from the start, this is where you can end up being hooked for a decade.
- Enjoying epic scale combat? Join our 16v16 team battles!
- Looking for a common goal? Fight AIs or waves of chicken-monsters.
- Prefer dancing on a razor's edge? Play 1v1 in ladder and tournaments.
- Comebacks, betrayals, emotions always running high in FFA.
- Want to fight for a bigger cause? Join PlanetWars, a competitive online campaign with web-game strategic elements, diplomacy and backstabbing (currently on hiatus pending an overhaul).
Power to the People
We are RTS players at heart, we work for nobody. We gave ourselves the tools we always wanted to have in a game.
- Do what you want. No limits to camera, queue or level of control.
- Paint a shape, any shape, and units will move to assume your formation.
- Construction priorities let your builders work more efficiently.
- Don't want to be tied down managing every unit movement? Order units to smartly kite, strafe or zig zag bullets.
Plenty of Stuff to Explore (and Explode)
Zero-K is a long term project and it shows, millions hours of proper multiplayer testing and dozens of people contributing ever expanding content.
- Learn to use all of our 100+ units and play on hundreds of maps.
- Invent the next mad team-tactics to shock enemies and make allies laugh.
- Combine cloaking, teleports, shields, jumpjets, EMP, napalm, gravity guns, black hole launchers, mind control and self-replication.
- Tiny flea swarm that clings to walls?
- Jumping "cans" with steam-spike?
- Buoys that hide under water to ambush ships?
- Mechs that spew fire and enjoy being tossed from air transports?
- Carrier with cute helicopters?
- Jumping Jugglenaut with dual wielding gravity guns?
- Meet them in Zero-K!
- OS: Ubuntu 13.04 or equivalent
- Processor: 2.0 GHz dual core CPU with SSE (Intel Core 2 Duo or equivalent)Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: 512 MB graphics card with OpenGL 3 support (GeForce 8800 or equivalent)
- Storage: 6 GB available spaceAdditional Notes: 64bit only. Big Picture mode is not supported
- OS: Ubuntu 17.10 or equivalent
- Processor: 3.0 GHz quad core CPU (Intel Core i5 or equivalent)Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: 2048 MB graphics card with OpenGL 3 support (high GT 500 series or equivalent)Network: Broadband Internet connection
- Storage: 8 GB available spaceAdditional Notes: 64bit only. Big Picture mode is not supported
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