I’m happy to say that I managed to submit my first Ludum Dare compo game late last night: Bush Craft!

I was a little thrown off with the theme in the beginning as it was simply not restrictive enough; and I had no idea what kind of game I should make.  It seemed to me the theme would be more meaningful if it was interpreted as ‘Entire Game on One Screen [… which usually would be on many]’.  So I decided to take the survival genre and reduce the massive expanses of land and vistas and get it all on the screen at once.

I used Java and AWT and made a very Notch-esque game (low-fidelity).  Unfortunately I spent a LOT of time in the first day trying to get alpha blending to work properly, which I couldn’t so I ditched it and just used color copying.  Then on the second day I was running so short of time I didn’t manage to create an music for the game.  Bxfr came to the rescue though and I was able to add basic sounds before submitting the game.  There were a few other features which I began but ultimately had to abandon due to lack of time.  The first was a retro style CRT post effect, then there was weather effects to mess up your temp reading some more (its current difficult to die from temp) and the last features were more things to do at night.  In the end I decide to speed the night up as you cannot see anything without lights.

I’ll spend a little time tonight fixing the help text (incorrect instructions) and I’ll upload the time-lapse to YouTube.

Despite the few minor setbacks, it was a fun event I hope to attend again next time,

Thanks and have fun playing.

[View Entry]