This is my first Ludum Dare, and I’m pretty excited about it.  Did a compo at GameJolt a few months ago and had a great time, so I’m looking forward to this bigger jam.  Also, being only 48 hours, I see it as a great way to leave my game dev comfort zone for a while and try something new.

I do a lot of work with SDL and C language, and the other jam I did used Pygame, so I’m going to try something new and use some web languages.  I want to see how far I can get with HTML, JS, and perhaps a little Python for the backend.  I even want to stay away from JQuery, just for the challenge.

Obviously whatever I end up having will be largely text based, so its a challenge in game design as well as an experiment on stretching the limits of the technology.

Language: HTML, JS, maybe a backend language like Python/PHP

Environment: Geany, LAMP

Graphics: Inkscape, KolourPaint, Evolotron

Audio: Hydrogen, QTractor, Audacity

I’ve finished!  I’m really happy with what I was able to accomplish, and I had a great time doing it.  And I learned a lot, especially with the benefits of using XML as a storage format.  Here is a mini post mortem:

What went right:

– I feel I accurately estimated the length of my project and avoided feature creep

– XML was great to work with, definitely better than flat file, RDMS, or CSV

– Music was really fun to make, even though I rushed it, it turned out alright.

What went wrong:

– Javascript is such a crappy language.  Bad readability, inconsistent syntax, and a pain to debug

– Qtractor was annoying to get the hang of

Tech:

Language:  HTML, CSC, JS, with jQuery

IDE: Geany

Music:  Qtractor

Graphics:  1001fonts.com, Evolotron

Browser/Debugger:  Firefox

Here is my entry: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-27/?action=preview&uid=24956

Screenshot:

A terrible game but learned more about the Ada language. https://github.com/bmsauer/bigfoot