This will be my 4th Ludum Dare over the last 3 years. I meant to start the last 2 but family work commitments took over and I didn’t get a chance to write a line of code.

This time, I have taken holidays with work and made plans to be free to take part.

My tools

• Unity
• C#
• Visual Studio 2013
• 3dsmax
• Photoshop
• LMMS
• Yahoo Games Network (if I decide to do multiplayer)

Some tips:

• Sleep: you will be much more productive with sleep than without. Solution to bugs seem to become obvious after even 20min sleep. Don’t exhaust yourself.
• Eat semi-healthy. Unless you eat it normally, your body won’t cope with 48 hours of only junk food. Keep your regular diet.
• Drink water: Yeah drink your energy drinks and coffee, but keep drinking water to keep your hydration up. Your brain functions much better when you are hydrated. Better functioning brain means better game means more fun for me when I play it.
• Have fun: No one is making you enter. If you aren’t having fun have a think about why not, what can you change to make it fun for you.
• Plan: Once the theme is announced and you come up with an idea (the idea itself can take some time, don’t stress if it doesn’t come quickly) plan out your time for the remainder of the game jam. Plan what you should be doing at what time( art, coding, music, polishing, etc). This way you will know if you are falling behind and need to cut features or if you are ahead and can spend some extra time polishing your game. Don’t stress if you end up falling behind or changing the plan, it’s just a guide. If you FAIL to PLAN you PLAN to FAIL.

These are some tips that help me. Your milage may vary.