Well folks, it is the halfway point.  Things have gone okay in the David camp.  Not quite as chargingly fast as I had originally hoped, but I have learned quite a bit in the process.

It may or may not have been the best idea to use a new language and graphics library for this contest, but I thought I would be adventurous.  I’ve recently been doing a lot of freelance websites that are Javascript heavy, so I thought this would be a good time to try out this shiny new Coffeescript thing that I’ve heard so much about.

I enjoy simplicity over complication, so I decided to first try to compile my Coffeescript in the browser.  This worked fairly well at first and I got up and running quickly, but between that and using the minified version of IvanK.js, I had zero stack traces and therefore no clue where any syntax or runtime error occurred.  This went on for a while until I got sick of it and decided to find a solution.  After fighting a losing battle with getting Node.js’s Windows version to install Coffeescript that could be seen from Cygwin, I finally came across this Github repo, which allows me to simple put Coffee.exe into my project folder and then a Vim post-save hook compiles Coffeescript into Javascript.

I’ve also had fun learning IvanK.js.  Ivan has ported the Flash Actionscript API to WebGL.  I’ve never really done anything with Flash, so this was a bit of a brainbender, but at this point after several wild goose chases and bug hunts, I think I’ve finally got the hang of it.  So, if I don’t finish this one, I’ll still have learned quite a bit, and Coffeescript is definitely going to be in my web development arsenal in the future.

But, I’ve got a good base, and am excited about the next 24 hours.  My game is codenamed “Futbol Manager Twenty-Twelve Million.”  Current progress can be seen at http://lifelessboring.com/ludumdare24.

In the words of Strong Bad,