tl;dr version:
We didn’t finish the project but we had a hell of a good time and will definitely be participating in future Ludum Dares. What follows is a list of useful things we found / were reminded of. If you’re interested in reading the rest of the blog (including what game we attempted to make and general feedback from our experience), hit the break.
* GraphicsGale / Allegro Sprite Editor (heheh)
* sfxr (how have I lived without this?!?)
* Pauls Online Math Notes (reexplained vector manipulation better than the other results I found)

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Well well well, that was a fun weekend! =D

Friday night, I took part in Ludum Dare for the first time with JD and DR. Yes, I’ll get their actual names here soon. =P Anyway, we got together at JD’s house and got right into development with the first idea we had: a steampunk platformer. I started reading the spring physics tutorial generously provided in the comments on the LD announcement for the competition.

Enter lesson number one: if you’re trying to learn something, start coding WHILE you’re learning about it. I spent the majority of Friday night reading the spring physics article. I didn’t even begin coding it until about the same time Saturday night. When you have less than 24 hours to work on something that is at least a 48 hour project, this isn’t a good thing. xD

While I was doing my thing, DR was sketching out ideas in a program called Pencil.

Lesson number two: set the bar loooooow for Ludum Dare graphics. It wasn’t until midway through Saturday night that we actually started up a sprite editor. /facepalm

During this whole time, JD was having fun in sfxr. xD

Lesson number three: SFXR FTW, so hold on to the cool sounds you make even if they don’t match the game you are currently working on! JD seemed to have a knack for attracting very…interesting…sounds. Seriously, one sound JD generated was an explosion that dissolves quickly into static, as if a camera was watching an explosion and then got hit by the shockwave.

Odds are There is other stuff worth saying, but I can’t think of it right now. The last few days have been fun but busy, and the rest of the week is looking to shape up the same way. Bottom line is I had a great time and I’m looking forward to next month!