Alas, it turns out that I am going to miss yet another LD. A last minute invite to las vegas with free travel and a free place to stay is taking over this weekend. It was a hard decision, but I’ve stopped voting on themes because of this. I’m half tempted to help out by culling the ones people hate, but I’m also tempted to vote up the ones we always see on the list but don’t want (evolution, I’m looking at you).

Good luck to everyone who is competing. There are a lot of new names posting — special good luck to all of you. Hopefully you all get hooked and become permanent parts of the community.

Quick advice to you newcomers:

1. Pick a game design that you can completely finish with time to spare but with room for additional features if you find yourself with extra time (lol). Too many first timers fail because they bite off more than they can chew.
2. Make code that does only what it needs to do. I’m the worst about spending way too much time writing general, well commented, extendable code snippets instead of just writing what I need. It’s 48 hours – if you want a piece of your code to use later, re-write it later.
3. As mentioned in an earlier post and on the wiki, there are lots of tools created by the LD community that can quickly add a large amount of polish to your game. Dr Petter has written two amazing tools that give you sound effects and music, as well as a graphics editor. Blecki has a good looking map editor. RB has a new 3D python framework (allowed?). I wrote a tool for making timelapses, and a loader to make judging the games less of a chore. I’m sure there are more – read what people are posting about their toolsets and ask around in IRC. In fact, we had a whole mini-LD on tools, so check that out as well.
4. Have fun! If you aren’t enjoying yourself, take a 20-60 minute break. If you hate your time making your game, we will probably hate our time playing it.

Tags: advice, newbies, tools