We’re In!

After a couple of us got sick last Ludum Dare and weren’t able to finish the jam entry that we were working on, we want to have a really strong showing for Ludum Dare #33.

We gave an invite to a few of our friends to join us, and it looks like a team of five or six people this time could be joining in, with a bit of a mixture of experienced jammers and newbies, it should prove interesting to see what we can come up with.

As far as tools go, we’re going to be using:

1. Eclipse with Java for the code, with a mixture of the Slick2D and Artemis-ODB libraries.
2. Paint.net, Inkscape, Spriter Pro, Graphics Gale, Adobe Photoshop, and MS Paint for graphics (a few of us have different tool preferences there).
3. SFXR for sound effects. Not sure about music creation yet.
4. Tiled for levels. XML and JSON for GUI creation and game data.
5. A work in progress game engine called Ecalda that is built on top of the libraries listed above. Since it’s unfinished and the jam doesn’t have the requirement to release base code, it’s unfortunately not available to the public yet, but it’s something that we’d like to release in the future.

A Question to the Community

What would you want out of a 2D game engine in terms of features? What sort of tasks do you find yourself coding from scratch that really ought to be inside the engine itself? Anything that popular libraries and engines are lacking, or that you’ve found really useful in others?

And Finally…

If, like us, you sometimes get stuck on ideas for the Jam after the theme is announced, I ran a few iterations of a random game idea generator that I coded while bored. Here’s some suggestions, many of them really silly…

1. A Dystopian and Historical themed Artillery game.
2. A Steampunk and Magic themed God game.
3. A Steampunk and Time Travel themed Role Playing game.
4. A Modern Day and Wartime themed Third Person Shooter game.
5. A Medieval and Steampunk themed God game.
6. An Underwater and Wartime themed Arena game.
7. A Biblical and Underwater themed Beat-em-up game.
8. A Sci-Fi and Medieval themed Trivia game.
9. An Eastern and Wartime themed Stealth game.
10. An Egyptian and Medieval themed Racing game.
11. A Steampunk and Underwater themed Real Time Strategy game.
12. A Ninjas and Biblical themed Tower Defence game.
13. A Sci-Fi and Fantasy themed Party game.
14. A Super-Hero and Magic themed Match Three game.
15. A Space and Modern Day themed Card game.
16. A Comedy and Egyptian themed Life Simulation game.
17. A Cyberpunk and Super-Hero themed Tower Defence game.
18. A Biblical and Ninjas themed Card game.
19. A Horror and Biblical themed Survival game.
20. A Gothic and Modern Day themed Adventure game.