I won’t have any real time to do this except at night after my daughter goes to bed. I might be able to pull a late-nighter if the pressure gets on. So really it’s the ultimate challenge: can you make a game in 8 hours?

Expect hasty pixel art, bleeps, bloops and the simplest mechanics I can reasonably implement to get a point across.

I will likely be using either Gamemaker or Haxepunk. I use Pixen, Tiled, and Autotilegen for graphics. Renoise or Garageband for music/audio. Though to save time I might just go with vector graphics and primitive shapes.

Well I submitted my game.

It’s incomplete. Terrible. And not a lot of fun. But I had a good time making it. When I had the time.

I joined LD48 at the last minute. I’m also a father and couldn’t take a break from that. I knew going in that it was unlikely that I’d be able to finish let alone compete. However the journey was challenging and interesting. You can learn more than you realize if you just give it a shot.

I now know what I cannot do. I don’t have forty-eight-straight free hours to do whatever I want with. I have to be tactical with what time I have. When I do get to spend it I need to know ahead of time what to focus on. And I have to make sacrifices to get to the goal. I cannot make games in my spare time with tight deadlines.

Some things I learned that I will carry with me if I ever decide to be crazy and sleep-deprived again:

1. Don’t try anything new. You don’t have time to look up API references or recall maths you haven’t used in a while.
2. Stick with tried and true designs. Shmups, platformers, and simple arcade games. You need to get it done not invent a whole new genre.
3. Leverage constraints more. See how minimal you can go. Maximize for fun. The less you have to do the better.
4. Plan to compete next time. Prepare.

All the best to all of the LD48 competitors and see you all next time.

I’ll be joining in. Although I have a busy weekend and a life. However I can steal away the wee hours and put something together. It will be fun! Like a walking through a dream.

I might do this in SDL2/PhysFS/C as I’m rather familiar with the APIs these days. However I’ve wanted to do something in HTML5/JS for a while because it makes sharing so dang easy. I just wish the gamepad and audio support were there (soon!). But if I’m honest with myself I will probably just use Unity so I don’t have to bother with coding all of the plumbing, managing assets, etc.

Whatever makes life easier, right?

The rest:

• Pixelmater
• Pixen
• Tiled
• Autotilegen
• sfxr
• Renoise

Trying again. Let’s see how little I can do this time! 😀