{"author_link":"\/users\/tthe","author_name":"tthe","author_uid":"tthe","comments":[],"epoch":1512468006,"event":"LD40","format":"md","ldjam_node_id":68289,"likes":8,"metadata":{"p_key":"105737","p_author":"tthe","p_authorkey":"1033089","p_urlkey":"321547","p_title":"LD40 - The good, the bad and the ugly","p_cat":"LDJam ","p_event":"LD40","p_time":"1512468006","p_likes":"8","p_comments":"0","p_status":"WAYBACK","us_key":"1033089","us_name":"tthe","us_username":"tthe","event_start":"1512086400","event_key":"70","event_name":"LD 40"},"node":{"_collation":{"body_sanitizer":"TextUtils::SanitizeHTML via existing importer","event":"LD40","removed_author":false},"_superparent":49883,"_trust":3,"author":33089,"body":"Hello everyone, I felt like I wanted to write a summary post of my experiences, things I learned and things I should've learned beforehand during the 40th Ludum Dare.\n\nThis wasn't the first time I participated, my first Ludum Dare was 3-4 years ago, and I tried to complete a game like 8 times so far. Of course, I couldn't finish them all, but this time I'm very proud of myself, because I could apply lots of things I experienced during these past events. \n\nI will now share a few of my advices and experiences that helped me finish.\n\n# **ALWAYS SLEEP WHEN YOU'RE TIRED**\n\nIn my country (Hungary), Ludum dare usually starts at 3:00 AM. In the past I always went to sleep early, to be able to wake up at around 2 am, grab a coffee and hop on the IRC channel to get to know the theme early. This usually resulted in my bio-cycle completely being messed up, and in the days to come I found it very hard to stay focused.\n\nThis time though I went to bed at the usual time, and got up around 8:00 AM, and maintained my usual sleep-cycle during the 3 days. I was very much suprised how clear my mind was during all three days.\n\n# **LEARN MATH**\n\nThe first few times I was in high school, and had absolutely no idea how 3D graphics worked, how to do vector and matrix math. Now, after a year at university I have learned all of these basic skills in math, and lots of things I found hard to make were easy-peasy. There are plenty of online game development sources, from where you can learn these kinds of things, I would very much advise you do so, if you haven't already.\n\n# **LEARN YOUR TOOL**\n\nI used libGDX for the 5th time I think at a Ludum Dare, so I knew it in and out ... at least I though so. Basic things, like sprite batchers, cameras, the weird coordinate system, application lifecycle were natural to me, but when I got to UI skining, it took me three times the time I estimated for it to take. I would advise you to use only the tools you know how to use, and learn new things beforehand, or after the Ludum Dare. 2-3 days are very short to know new design principles (conventional OOP design VS ECS in Unity for example), and technologies.\n\n# **NEVER START WITHOUT A CONCEPT**\n\nMultiple times I failed, because I didn't have a concept from the first hour, and just started to write some boilerplate code, thinking that it would lead somewhere. SPOILER ALERT: It didn't. Always have a concept, and only start working on the code, or assets when you know exactly what you're going to create, and only minor things are left to be thought through.\n\nI would also like to include some things I learned during this particular LD:\n\n* When you're doing hexagons, do it according to the book. I started using my own coordinate system for hexagons, where the center tile was (0, 0), left from it were negative X coords, and to the right were positive coords. This led to some weird design choices, for example I couldn't just index my tiles, I had to store them in a simple List, and I had to do some not-so-optimal HashMap magic to be able to query a single tile at the given coordinates.\n* If you're doing UI, don't start making your own UI framework, use the one provided. I made some ugly classes to represent buttons, and panels, but in the end I found myself replacing all of this code with the libGDX Stage system.\n\nThat concludes my thoughts about this particular LD, and in general. I hope I could give good advice to some new comers, and I wish all of your games the very best of luck!\n\nIf you want to, you can check out my game at https:\/\/ldjam.com\/events\/ludum-dare\/40\/dem-colors","comments":1,"comments-timestamp":"2017-12-05T10:16:30Z","created":"2017-12-05T09:42:06Z","files":[],"files-timestamp":0,"id":68289,"love":8,"love-timestamp":"2017-12-05T10:56:29Z","meta":[],"modified":"2017-12-05T10:56:29Z","name":"LD40 - The good, the bad and the ugly","node-timestamp":"2017-12-05T10:00:06Z","parent":51709,"parents":[1,5,9,49883,51709],"path":"\/events\/ludum-dare\/40\/dem-colors\/ld40-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly","published":"2017-12-05T10:00:06Z","scope":"public","slug":"ld40-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly","subsubtype":"","subtype":"","type":"post","version":195470},"node_metadata":{"n_key":"68289","n_urlkey":"321547","n_parent":"51709","n_path":"\/events\/ludum-dare\/40\/dem-colors\/ld40-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly","n_slug":"ld40-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ug","n_type":"post","n_subtype":"","n_subsubtype":"","n_author":"33089","n_created":"1512466926","n_modified":"1512471389","n_version":"195470","n_status":"WAYBACK"},"source_url":"https:\/\/ldjam.com\/events\/ludum-dare\/40\/dem-colors\/ld40-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly","text":"Hello everyone, I felt like I wanted to write a summary post of my experiences, things I learned and things I should've learned beforehand during the 40th Ludum Dare.\n\nThis wasn't the first time I participated, my first Ludum Dare was 3-4 years ago, and I tried to complete a game like 8 times so far. Of course, I couldn't finish them all, but this time I'm very proud of myself, because I could apply lots of things I experienced during these past events. \n\nI will now share a few of my advices and experiences that helped me finish.\n\n# **ALWAYS SLEEP WHEN YOU'RE TIRED**\n\nIn my country (Hungary), Ludum dare usually starts at 3:00 AM. In the past I always went to sleep early, to be able to wake up at around 2 am, grab a coffee and hop on the IRC channel to get to know the theme early. This usually resulted in my bio-cycle completely being messed up, and in the days to come I found it very hard to stay focused.\n\nThis time though I went to bed at the usual time, and got up around 8:00 AM, and maintained my usual sleep-cycle during the 3 days. I was very much suprised how clear my mind was during all three days.\n\n# **LEARN MATH**\n\nThe first few times I was in high school, and had absolutely no idea how 3D graphics worked, how to do vector and matrix math. Now, after a year at university I have learned all of these basic skills in math, and lots of things I found hard to make were easy-peasy. There are plenty of online game development sources, from where you can learn these kinds of things, I would very much advise you do so, if you haven't already.\n\n# **LEARN YOUR TOOL**\n\nI used libGDX for the 5th time I think at a Ludum Dare, so I knew it in and out ... at least I though so. Basic things, like sprite batchers, cameras, the weird coordinate system, application lifecycle were natural to me, but when I got to UI skining, it took me three times the time I estimated for it to take. I would advise you to use only the tools you know how to use, and learn new things beforehand, or after the Ludum Dare. 2-3 days are very short to know new design principles (conventional OOP design VS ECS in Unity for example), and technologies.\n\n# **NEVER START WITHOUT A CONCEPT**\n\nMultiple times I failed, because I didn't have a concept from the first hour, and just started to write some boilerplate code, thinking that it would lead somewhere. SPOILER ALERT: It didn't. Always have a concept, and only start working on the code, or assets when you know exactly what you're going to create, and only minor things are left to be thought through.\n\nI would also like to include some things I learned during this particular LD:\n\n* When you're doing hexagons, do it according to the book. I started using my own coordinate system for hexagons, where the center tile was (0, 0), left from it were negative X coords, and to the right were positive coords. This led to some weird design choices, for example I couldn't just index my tiles, I had to store them in a simple List, and I had to do some not-so-optimal HashMap magic to be able to query a single tile at the given coordinates.\n* If you're doing UI, don't start making your own UI framework, use the one provided. I made some ugly classes to represent buttons, and panels, but in the end I found myself replacing all of this code with the libGDX Stage system.\n\nThat concludes my thoughts about this particular LD, and in general. I hope I could give good advice to some new comers, and I wish all of your games the very best of luck!\n\nIf you want to, you can check out my game at https:\/\/ldjam.com\/events\/ludum-dare\/40\/dem-colors","title":"LD40 - The good, the bad and the ugly","wayback_source":[]}