{"author_name":"machinas","cat":"LD #19 - Discovery - 2010","comments":[{"author_name":"","time":"November 15, 2010 5:29 am","epoch":1289816940,"text":"I wouldn&#8217;t worry too much about your programmer art during the compo &#8212; look around, you&#8217;re in good company.","spam":"N"},{"author_name":"Sparky","time":"December 13, 2010 11:00 am","epoch":1292256000,"text":"Incidentally, perhaps it&#8217;s a blessing- you&#8217;re probably less likely to fall into the trap of spending too much time on refining the art.","spam":"N"}],"epoch":1289775840,"likes":0,"metadata":{"p_key":"69043","p_author":"machinas","p_authorkey":"2925","p_urlkey":"104846","p_title":"Getting ready for my first LD","p_cat":"LD #19 - Discovery - 2010","p_event":"LD18","p_time":"1289775840","p_likes":"0","p_comments":"2","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"2925","us_name":"machinas","us_username":"machinas","event_start":"1282262400","event_key":"4","event_name":"LD18"},"text":"<p>Well, this is my first post, so, &#8216;Hello, everybody!&#8217; I\u00a0finally decided to actually participate in LD instead of just watch it and I&#8217;ve been getting myself ready for it.<\/p>\n <p>Here&#8217;s what I have so far:<\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>I&#8217;m going to give HTML5 canvas a shot, since I wanted to use this LD to learn something new, but know enough javascript that it&#8217;s not a crazy risk (probably).<\/li>\n <li>I think I&#8217;ve finally settled on using the NetBeans IDE after having tried a bunch of other stuff. It&#8217;s not really meant for simple HTML and javascript, but you can sort of trick it into working. It&#8217;s\u00a0auto-complete\u00a0and syntax\u00a0highlighting\u00a0are great!<\/li>\n <li>I&#8217;m building out some basic javascript support libraries. So far I have basic input handling, sprite preloading, ticking and simple drawing.<\/li>\n <li>I tried to set up a basic schedule. I think reasonably I can expect to work 10 hours a day, since I&#8217;m not a college student anymore. An hour or two for design, 8 hours of engine and mechanics, 5 hours of feature completeness, 5 hours of bug fixing and polish. I&#8217;ll be curious to see how fast this dissolves into &#8216;just go as fast as you can&#8217;.<\/li>\n <li>I ordered a fancy pants ergonomic keyboard. I just can&#8217;t spend hours typing on those standard things without my hands falling apart, so this ought to help me even physically make it to the finish line.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p>My background is programming, so I&#8217;m a bit worried about the art. I&#8217;ve watched a lot of the time lapse and seen plenty of folks spend hours and hours on the art and end up short on the code. I think I&#8217;ll probably have the opposite problem.<\/p>\n <p>I wonder what percentage of first timers actually manage to finish&#8230;<\/p>","time":"November 14th, 2010 6:04 pm","title":"Getting ready for my first LD"}