Hi all!  I’m participating in the Ludum Dare compo for the first time.

I’ll be coding in Scala, and using the following tools & libs:

• Sgine or Ardor3D or plain LWJGL for 3D  (I’ve participated in the development of Sgine).

• Probably Slick if I decide to go 2D.

• Gimp or Flowpaint for graphics (Flowpaint is my work-in-progress open source paint prog).

• Sound fx I’m not sure about, maybe I’ll try out sfxr.  If I get around to making music I’ll use some tracker or procedurally code it.

• Depending on the physics code complexity needed I might use my open source units library.

• Various open source libraries as needed for loading data etc.

Last time I participated in a weekend game compo was in the Allegro SpeedHack compo back in the 90’s with a planetary shooter:

Those were the days

Good luck to all, looking forward to see the entries!

Tags: scala

Tags: motivation

Well, we all know that LudumDare lasts 48hs, but i think the biggest issue is the to dedicate all of thoose 48hs to make your game, since you need to rest at some point.  So, how can i stay active for as long as possible without feeling down? Here are some of the things i do in theese cases, most of them are very casual things you’d probably already tried out, but still quite effective:

_Coffe: Classic, in the first place for sure. The coffe wont make you feel dizzy for a while, but the effect wont last if you are too tired, i may just give you stomach pain if you drink a lot :S

_Apples: Most of people doesnt know that apples are used to stay awake, this is serious stuff (my dad uses to do eat anapple on its way to work when he is tired) it doesnt avoids you to asleep, it just makes your brain to stay more active.

_Sleep a lot before the Compo starts: Of course, the day before the compo starts you sleep a lot, simple.

_Eat: When you eat your body gains energy, you may  have noticed that when you just had dinner its harder to get asleep. Eat stuff with sugar is also a very good idea. (thats why you must not give children candies at night :P)
One important thing here: If you have only one big meal you will feel tired once that whole bunch of food gets diggested. break the consumpion in smaller dosis.

_Music: Listening music is great to keep your mind busy, specially if its something you never heard before, or that you havent heard in a long time.

_Lights on!: This is very important, in darker enviroments you will tend to feel more sleepy (Natural light is always better)

_Have some air you punk!: dont keep ur ass in that chair all day long, go outside, clear up your head, play ball, do something!
I think thoose are all i can think off right now, remember to get at least some sleep too, since the key is to stay active for as long as possible, not to stay sleeplees and tired 😛

Screenshots of my past LD games:

Yes, thats all of them.

Seriously.

I did 5 LDs in a row, took a break, and now I'm making my comeback!

Tags: montage

I will be using Lua, the Love Engine, and Notepad ++. I am going to attempt to make a game using solely primitives and particles. No sprites/bitmaps. I got the idea from the Love MMO (http://www.quelsolaar.com/) by Eskil Steenberg. I figure Love Engine = Love MMO right?

I’m either going to use the basecode sprite engine from the last two mini-LDs or the basecode OpenGL 3D engine from an independent project. These are both worked out to be separate includes so I can provide the source for these ahead of time if this level of basecode is a problem. Both are pretty generic (the sprite engine isn’t even completely done, it’s done enough to display sprites but the map manager isn’t done so it has to be implemented in client code anyway).

Here’s what the sprite engine looked like as of the last MiniLD:

And the 3D engine just displays a pregenerated map right now:

Both of these engines are done in FreeBasic which is a FOSS compiler with Basic-style syntax that produces GCC-compatible builds.

This looks fun, here’s mine:

Tags: montage

Okay so… Its gonna be a game about building skyscrapers out of bugs. You gotta watch out for the flying birds. You can only build at night in the cover of darkness, because the isolation bugs feel when in hidden depths at night.You must cooperate with the rain, which causes the birds to go into a panic, thus allowing you to clone your bugs and grow your skyscraper. If your lucky, you can trap a bird by covering it with bugs and making it claustrophobic, thus using your enemy as a weapon. When your skyscraper is attacked by birds, your bugs can occasionally cheat death by using a parachute. The game takes place in the 1400s, so parachutes are technology in the wrong time period. Eventually, your bugs will evolve, allowing you to beat the birds at their own game.

You win the game when you reach the double zombie rainbow. Only to realize it was all a dream. This ending will completely destroy any shred of hope the player has of the game having a resolution, creating a non-standard game over.

Anyone care to make another?

In my original post, I said I’d probably write my game in either C or Yabasic. Well, now I have made up my mind: I’ll write it in C, possibly using either the nCurses or the SDL libraries depending on the kind of game (graphical or not) I end up creating.

I’m looking forward to the challenge. All the best to everyone who’s participating!

Hi, this is my first LD, and really my first game compo since the Minigame compo in 2003 (where I submitted the only 1k NES game).  I enjoy programming contests and I’m trying to get better at making games, so I’m really looking forward to it!

I’ll be using MTASC and swfmill (and likely Inkscape and Gimp) to work in Flash, maintaining swf v7 compatibility.  This due at least somewhat to the idealistic desire to have the game work in gnash.  I’ve been working on a few games in this environment for about a month, so it’s at the top of my mind.

I hope to enjoy playing y’all’s games!

200 grams of joy

At least something will be Elite this round!

Tags: caffeine, coffee, foodphoto, I hope this lasts the entire competition, preparation

So I’m still relatively new to Ludum Dare so my montage is a little sparse:

Very excited about making something awesome this weekend as I’ve been too busy this month to work on my other game projects.

I’m going to travel to Cambridge first thing tomorrow morning to join in the Ludum Dare Jam we’ve got going on there that Terry’s already posted about.

As I’m not really into the competitive side of Ludum Dare I’m going to be jamming from the outset but hopefully some of you will still play my game.

Though I can’t say for certain right now I would suspect I will end up building something in Unity and use SketchUp to do the modelling for it.

Gonna be a great weekend!

Tags: montage

Hurray! Dogs shall prevail!

Tags: motivation

I’m joining in.. hopefully this time I’ll be able to dedicate more time then in last mini-ld. I’ll be using either Unity3d or flash (AS2).

For AS2 I’ll be using my own homemade framework called Playground Framework, I’ll upload it and post a link to it (is this a must?), but I doubt anyone but me will be able to use this messed up pulp of classes and functions….

Can’t wait to find out what the theme is! 😀

I vote against challenging camera, come on guys, there are so many cool themes on display.

Bandwagon!
Here’s the three entries I made from the past :

LD15 pic – Cavern Chase – my first ever entry into LD. Came out quite well for a first entry.
LD16 pic – Explore Quest – This was a dream to make. there’s a Timelapse too.
LD17 pic – Mad Hatter Island – This was a nuts idea for an entry in the last hours of LD#17. Made in 2 hours start to finish.

LD18 – Who knows? Let’s hope it’s something good

Tags: bandwagon, montage

(that Paul from the world cup who picked the winners)

<asie[muted]> .8 Will I win Ludum Dare, though?
<@X3> asie[muted]: Yes.

Wow.

<Devlin> .8 Am I going to beat asie[muted] by 0.1% in LD18?
<@X3> Devlin: It’s hard to be sure.

<asie[muted]> .8 Will Notch be second place?
<@X3> asie[muted]: In your dreams…

<TenjouUtena> .8 Will I be second place?
<@X3> TenjouUtena: Yes.

After much extra arguing, we got to these results:

X3’s pickings for Ludum Dare 18 are:

1st place: asiekierka

2nd place: TenjouUtena

3rd place: mrdude

It’s mandatory. (seriously, post yours too)

that's where the magic happens

Tags: deskphoto

“No battle plan ever survives the first contact with the enemy” – Helmuth von Moltke the Elder

(actually he said “No plan of operations extends with certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy’s main strength” but in German and that doesn’t sound as cool and nobody cares what a 19th century German general said anyway)

My strategy:

• Decide what kind of game I’ll be making before the compo starts, then adapt as needed for the theme. (I must avoid repeating what I did last LD when I still didn’t know if I was making a racing game or a platformer 7-8 hours before the end)
• Focus on implementing gameplay first. Get the game to a point where it’s fun before anything else.
• Don’t waste time on micro-details. Just move on, it’s OK if it’s not perfect.
• Add sound and music early. I usually wait until the very last hour to get started on those. That’s not a good idea!
• And obviously “Keep It Simple, Stupid!”, last time I wasted time thinking about a full adventure game I couldn’t do in 3 months.

Here’s my framework. I say framework, it’s just a few helper scripts in Unity for handling sound and text. You’re welcome to use it! [update: fixed a couple of compile errors!]