My first time with Ludum Dare and I saw on the rules that we need to make this blog post so this is just to say hello and that I’m using Java with 2 libraries. Those libraries will be lwjgl and slick2d. Other than that I don’t know if this is the right place or time to do this but it is here .

I started the compo on Friday knowing that something was going to go terribly wrong and I probably wouldn’t be able to submit, I just didn’t know it would be this frustrating. I wrote my game in java (yes I know it isn’t very good for games, its just what I’m most comfortable with) and I wrote it all in the 48 hours like we are supposed to using lwjgl and slick2d. When I got to 2 hours before the end of the compo I was thinking it would all go fine, I would submit my terrible game and be done with it and say I did it. The only problem is that java wants to be stupid with me. When I try exporting my game all it does is say “Main Class not found” or something like that. I thought “Ok, simple fix, I’ll just Google it” the only problem is that none of the fixes worked. I tried everything and now all I have is the source code and I can’t enter until I get this problem resolved. So I guess I’m just going to be submitting to the 72 hour jam instead (that is if I can figure out the problem). The list of problems I had with my game is very large, but a few major problems off the top of my head are this; collision detection needs an overhaul, AI is bare bones and needs reworked, art work is terrible, no background, optimization problems (locked at 30 so you don’t notice frame drops), only one spell to use (didn’t even get to put in spell selector). I still want to work on this project, but it almost seems like I need to reprogram the whole thing to get rid of these problems.

Although I had the problems at the end and didn’t submit yet, I did learn a lot from the weekend. For one, I learned I still have a lot to learn in terms of programming a game that I need to start making small but complete games. I have never actually completed a game before, I have made mini demos that I wanted to turn into larger games eventually but I wanted to try that other library or other programming language. So now I’m going to stick with SDL (I know its another programming language, but bleh) for making games and just go from there. For two, lwjgl is much harder to learn than SDL (which is why I am switching to it). I had a lot of problems with small things that I had to look a while for. I want to work with something that has good documentation and I can easily Google something for it. Three, I need to work on my art. Just reference the screenshot posted to see how bad I am. Four, don’t work on a weekend that family is in town. I spent a lot of time with the family instead of the compo which really put me behind and made it to where I had to rush some things and wasn’t able to get all the features I wanted in, in time. Five, I need to learn to work through the night. Right when I got tired, I immediately had to go to bed both nights. In some cases that is good, but if I need to do homework for school or a project for work, I need to learn to work through the night. Six, I need to do more prep work before getting started. When I got started I thought to myself “Oh, a dungeon game that you go down in until you reach Hell, that sounds interesting and like something I can do” that is about as much thought I put into it before I got started. I didn’t know what was going to be in it what the mechanics were going to be like. The only reason that didn’t screw me over completely is that I never got far enough for any of the advanced stuff to matter. The game at this point is just a bunch of simple mechanics that really don’t mean much.

This was fun and I learned a lot, but hopefully next time I will be a little more prepared. Hopefully I’ll have some more experience behind my back since I’m graduating from high school in less than a month and I will be free to work on more projects. I will do the next compo and hopefully I’ll have something to submit. Thanks if you read this far and good luck with your own games :).