This is our first Ludum Dare! (How do you pronounce it? I’m assuming it’s “Loo-dum Dair”) Our team of 2-3 is planning on doing a live feed via twitch.tv and updating the blog as much as possible. Stay tuned!

First of all I’m in, going to be using C#, XNA, VSExpress 2010, Paint.net and AudioTool.

This is my second Ludum Dare so I have lesson learned from my first time round.

1. Better sleep management. Not sleeping at all is a bad thing, over sleeping is a bad thing too. Find a balance. Where I went wrong last year was I was already awake for ~ 20 hours when the Theme was announced.

I crashed hard.

2. You are going to eat. Have food handy. Nuff said.

3. Use the tools available. This is not a competition about beautifully perfect collision detection or beautifully tight code. Find API’s that you are comfortable with! That will do the hard stuff for you. Below is a pre-built template that I will be using, It’s 5 classes with a total of ~150 lines of code, It contains structures for my game states, collision, classes you can inherit from for obstacles, opponents, levels and triggers for moving between levels. Any XNA user reading this should think about using it!
https://sites.google.com/site/jiykohost/ld22/LDBackEnd.zip?attredirects=0&d=1

Other than that good luck to everyone! I am rooting for either snow, antihero, twisted or drone but I’m up for everything!
My place of work has a Christmas party on Saturday so I will be coding in parts while wearing a suit.

Heya!
I wasn’t originally going to do Ludum Dare as I am extremely new to Game Developing (I just picked up Flash this week) but over the last week, I participated in a local ‘jam’ called Game Prototype Challenge (my game can be found here and it’s called “The Void” in case anyone cared) and I had so much fun making a game but it was also good to have that time constraint because it forced me to actually buckle down and get to work.

I am unsure of the tools I will be using but for now, I am playing around with Flixel, Paint.net and sfxr. I can’t wait to see everyone else’s creations as well, hope to speak to some of you soon! xo

Just wanted to join my fellow honoured gamedevs in declaring my intention to join this weekend in Ludum Dare 22. The themes so far have been absolutely amazing and fill me with ideas. I’ve been doing a lot of hardcore, low-level coding recently with book projects, client work and 3d gamedev, so I’m going to take a break and go LOW TECH. Here are the new tools of choice for me:

HTML5, using Ippa Lix’s lovely JAWSJS canvas-based 2d sprite lib.

No grid, no tiles, no level editor: all art will be hand drawn.

No IDE, no server, no database, no 3d: just a text editor and photoshop.

Low bandwidth, low resolution, low workload: simplicity is my goal.

No physics, no AI, no multiplayer, no optimizations: so simple it runs well.

No installer, no plugins, no downloads: an .html file, a .js file and a png or two.

No stress: I’m aiming to finish a playable working prototype a day early.

Lots of sleep, lots of playing with my baby son and going out with the wife.

Lots of free time playing Skyrim and going outside.

I’m not here to win, I’m here to grin!

Happy holidays, everyone! Can’t wait to play your games.

Here’s something to motivate you:

Tags: motivation

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 14th, 2011 at 2:18 pm and is filed under LD #22. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Well my first post didn’t do well on listing what resources my brother and I are going to use so here’s the list:

• Java (For certain.  I’m only a novice, but if anyone has any questions about the standard API I’ll try and lend a hand, but I won’t make the game for you :P)
• GIMP 2 (My Brother will be handling Graphics)
• SFXR
• Musagi
• And Possibly Audacity

Im In! I have only been in one Ludum Dare and had soooo much fun!

Im excited for this one because I have learned alot more about Unity

then I knew then! 😀

OS: Macosx 10.0 Lion

Engine: Unity

Other Tools:

photoshop

maya

still have to pick my music software 😀

see ya then!

Going in for my first LD, not sure how it’s all gonna pan out but hey, should be fun.

Tools of the trade:

• Language: Java
• IDE: Eclipse, of course
• Graphics: Adobe Fireworks
• Sound: sfxr or bfxr
• Base code: None

That sums that up then I guess, can’t wait to get started. =P

Language: AS3 (Flash)
IDE: FlashDevelop 4.0
Graphics: Photoshop, Flash CS5
Sound: bfxr, Audacity

First timer here, I’ve thought about doing this for ages and now it’s time. Got some tools ready and my post-its prepared, this is going to be sweet!

• Language: AS
• Engine: Flixel
• Graphics: Probably Photoshop
• Music: Not decided yet
• SFX: No idea, maybe sfxr.

Fun times awaits!

So, I’m in! This will be my first official LD participation. I’m not even sure that I’ll be able to find the time, but I’m determined to try to at least (daughter, wife, and holidays all also require my attention).

I’m also hurriedly trying to finish my framework/template/thingy in order to facilitate actually participating I’ve made some good progress in the past few days, and am trying my hardest to get it out the door by Friday.

• Language: C++
• IDE: none (vi) and Code::Blocks
• Graphics: gimp
• Sound: not sure yet, probably one of the awesome free SFX tools found on LD for effects and reason for some simple muzak
• Framework: JLDGT – Jesse’s Ludum Dare Game Template. It’s a home-brew mash of SDL, OpenGL and some classes to make the world go ’round. Designed to be simple, organized, and fast (that’s what the plan is anyway)

I work in Linux, but I know it compiles in Windows as well (and Mac is probably not terribly difficult, but I’m not targeting that yet, don’t own a Mac to test with).

It may end up that I just complete my template and a very very basic game, but I’ll be satisfied with that Just want to get something out there! Excited, nervous, and happy!

Hey guys, for anyone who’s using pygame, here’s a tilemap loader that loads .tmx files generated by Tiled. Not sure if I’m going to even use it in my ludum dare game, but I thought it might help someone out, so I’m releasing it here.

Link: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/53370814/TileMap.rar

I’m most likely going to participate this time around. Missed the last LD because I was traveling and couldn’t come up with a good idea. I have a busy weekend ahead of me but if I can find a good idea with the theme quickly enough I might just try and squeeze my time to make it. If I do, I’ll be using JavaScript with HTML5 technologies. Always wanted to do a roguelike, too, so if it fits the theme that’s what I’ll do.

I’m in once again!

Last LD was quite hellish, due to large portions of my time spent coding tile and level loading systems rather than actually making the game. Coupled with me helping redecorate my bedroom in the same weekend… Yeah. After I finished my game I then proceeded to spend three days trying to get the damn thing to compile in Windows (I made the game in Linux), and then more time writing new shaders so the game would run on older hardware, but it still wouldn’t run on hardware that didn’t support OpenGL 3.0+ due to a flaw in my tile rendering system!

So, yeah. I’m not doing that again. It was my first LD and it was still fun, but at the same time quite horrible. I’ve decided that when it comes to making a game as fast as possible, using C++, SDL and OpenGL is not a good idea. Sure, I could probably do it quicker now this time, and cross-compiling is no longer a pain for me, but using those tools would still be unnecessary effort.

This time around, I’ll be using Flash with Flixel. I haven’t used it that much before; I used it for the first time yesterday, in fact, but it seems pretty damn simple and intuitive! I’ve got a day off school on Friday so I’ll be spending that day just getting a firm grasp with it. Best of all, it’ll be cross platform without any extra effort! Yay! I was originally intending to use Game Maker, but with Flash you just click a link in a web browser, and bam, it’s there!

I’ll be participating in the jam, as I’ll be working with a friend who’s going to do the artwork (hand drawn!) and music for the game. He (‘he’ being Ben) has a SoundCloud page here: http://soundcloud.com/dosage. He’s also doing the artwork and music for my main project, Station 6, a puzzle platformer (I have a devlog here: http://supermaximo.com/) </shameless plug>

And I think that’s all I have to say. Tool list:

Language: ActionScript 3

IDE: FlashDevelop

Graphics: Hand drawn by Ben

Audio: Dunno what software Ben uses, but it’s probably pretty good

Code libraries: Flixel

Development OS: Windows in a virtual machine, running on Ubuntu 11.04

Cake? Yes.

And now I leave you with Ben’s gentleman spider eye!

Ok, lets try this again.  Last time, I ran into a problem with collisions that I ended up fiddling away way to many hours on. This time I’m thinking of going 3D and forgoing some of my later issues. I have a vague plan in mind taking into account the themes that are fairing well so far and I’m excited for the compo.

I will be using:

• Blitz3D again
• Paint.net
• SFXR
• Blender(?) …haven’t decided.
• A whiteboard
• Paper, Pencil, etc.
• Food, air, squid…all that normal stuff.

Looking forward to 22!   I’m in.

Tags: Blitz3D, im in, LD22

We’re a group of university students who just handed in our final pieces of work for the semester. Now we get to relax by making more games =)

This is the first time any of us have competed in this competition, hopefully it’ll be fun =)

Programming Language: C#
Libraries: XNA
Platforms: Windows

I’m in for this one. Going to do a text adventure using inform 7. I’m hoping for some dark topic because I want to do something really dark this time.

Hope everyone has fun out there!

Yo, I’m totally in this time! I’ll probably be jamming cause my toolchain is so clogged with my commercial stuff now, but ya never know.

Compo code base:
– python / pygame
– AS3, which I don’t know, but I’ve hacked a few crummy things together in it before
– dev under linux and port to windows

Jam code base:
– C++ / PHP if I use any web backend stuff
– or just PHP if I do a multiplayer web game
– dev under OS X and port to windows

Tools:
– iPad with MultiTrack for recording audio clips and sound effects
– the gimp for graphics stuffs
– maybe modplug tracker for music
– sfxr if I need blips and beeps

Them’s the plans! I may do an iOS game if it’s the right theme. I think I might be leaning towards doing something with AS3, maybe I should spend friday learning it a bit in advance so I’m not scrambling to get my skills together.

-Phil

Hello all,

As I am a first timer to LD, as well as any sort of time restricted game jam, I’m interested in discovering best practices from those more experienced in this type of competition.  Any tips or pointers would be greatly appreciated.  Reading through a lot of the introductory posts here, I’ve noticed an overwhelming amount of first timers like myself, so I think this information will be valuable to a large number of participants.

Some things I’m specifically seeking advice on:

• Time management – Specifically, I’m wondering if you’ve found that spending some time thinking through the design of your game before starting work (perhaps even writing down a few things about the gameplay, story, characters, etc.) was most helpful, or if diving right in and prototyping your idea(s) worked better
• Art assets – Personally, art is my biggest weakness.  I honestly can’t draw at all.  I’m planning on either doing A) pixel art or B) a very sparse/minimalist art style, akin to Asteroids.  So I’m wondering how those less gifted with all things art related have dealt with this weakness and how it has worked out for you in the past.  Judging by past successful LD projects, having good art and presentation is immensely important.
• Scope creep (or, overambitiousness) – Obviously, trying to do “too much” in a game in 48 hours would be a killer, but it’s kind of hard to judge or quantify what “too much” would be.  Any past experiences would be greatly appreciated here.

Thanks so much for any responses!  Certainly feel free to pass down any other advice you may have that I have not specifically asked about.

Let’s do this. My first LD and I’m exited as hell.

Tools of War:
Photoshop CS5
Synfig Studio
StencylWorks (Libraries: Box2D, Flixel, and my own path finding base if I can get it finished fast enough.)
XSplit
sfxr

You’ll be able to watch my stream at twitch.tv/sweeteststream

this will be my first Ludum Dare, long time I watch what’s happen here from the outside, it’s time to get involve too

I think I’ll use:
– Python 2.7, with PyGame and maybe pyBox2D
– Eclipse with PyDev as IDE
– GraphicsGale
– SFXR