I'm so glad I was finally able to participate in a Ludum Dare! This past weekend was an incredible time and I'm so glad I took the repeated suggestions to participate in a game jam. It was one of the most fun times I've had with a computer in years and was a fantastic reminder of why I taught myself programming in the first place so many years ago.

I took a short break on Sunday afternoon to have lunch with my mom. I explained to her the concept of a game jam and why I was acting half crazy and hyper focused, she said "so you haven't left your house at all?" and "I hope some good can come of all this." :laughing::thumbsup:

I'm going to get some rest today, but I'm excited to play and vote on some other entries.

Anyway, here's my entry! Escape Velocity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hIfousEnJY

Personal takeaways

• Writing terrible hackjob code can still work just fine.
• I'm glad I cut myself off while making animations too early on
• Task triage! I categorized features into groups, "nice to have" stuff got deferred until the game mostly worked. If I hadn't done this I would have probably spent 6 hours just drawing sprite animations.
• I really enjoy this stuff, and the people who told me I'd grow out of wanting to make games can shove it.

Things I wish I had done

• Been able to sleep more -- I was enjoying myself so much and I was so excited that I was only able to pull about 5 hours of sleep each night because as soon as I became self-aware I'd immediately launch myself from bed and start guzzling coffee. If I had managed my full 7-8 hours I wouldn't have spent the entirety of Sunday unable to perform simple maths.
• Categorize game mechanics -- The game as it is now, only has a few of the core mechanics that I originally planned. Lots of ideas were left on the cutting room floor due to time constraints. I think if I had identified specific game mechanics earlier on I could have prioritized my time better. But, dreaming big left me with a ton of exciting ideas that I want to add to a post-jam version.
• Write some Gimp plugins ahead of time for working with dithered gradients -- I don't do much pixel art, but this would have made my life much easier.

Anyway, that's all for now! I hope everyone else had as much fun as I did :smile:

-- Mark @klowner