Greetings. I thought this was my fourth LD, but after looking back it must be my third. Apparently I can’t count. I don’t even know who I am anymore.

Assuming this is my third time, that leaves the score so far at 1-1: I finished LD11 with a half-decent entry, and bombed out on LD12 due to too much time spent trying to make my unfamiliar dev environment work (for the record, Flex can go die in a fire).

Back with a vengeance, and this time I’m planning to eschew Flash in favour of trusty old C++. Madness? Or… genius?

See, C++ has a few advantages.

• Every library on the planet (that I care about) works with it out of the box. (Unlike D, and everything Flash.)
• The tool support, in the form of Visual Studio, is unparalleled. Unless you count .NET, but there’s no way I’m learning C# as part of Ludum Dare. I made that mistake already with Flex.
• I’m using it at work now – to make games, no less! w00t! – so I’m a lot more familiar with it than in previous LDs.
• The compiler has strict error-checking. I used to hate this, but after further experience with Python I’ve seen the light. I like having my mistakes caught early!

Will probably use Irrlicht or SDL as my main platform, depending, and I have all the usual suspects for content generation in mind: GIMP, Inkscape, sfxr, Audacity, maybe Blender if I get ambitious (hate the old interface – might try the beta).

…

Wait, Islands? Really? Bah humbug. First priority: Take a walk and brainstorm.