After the spam filter stopped looking at me, I could now register for LD48 no 22. It will be my first one and pretty excited to join the Cape Town community in-person.

Tools are pretty much XNA and Photoshop. I’ll probably skip 3D for this one.

Good luck to all!

My first LD and I finished! Was absolutely awesome to work in the Cape Town group. And I learnt a load…

Anyway, I didn’t post any continual updates through out. I had to attend a wedding last night which cut into my time, among other things. So apologies for that. But, I cannot believe everything I achieved in 48 hours. Everyone around me made truly awesome games.

Speed to Freedom is a tunnel racer where you need to achieve maximum speed for as long as possible (acceleration is automatic) in order to deliver freedom from the war. You are ALONE in this mission (the theme drives the story).

Obstacles in the way will hamper your progress, and watch out for flying overhead!!

Well, halfway through Monday and I’m still awake. That has to be some sort of accomplishment, right?

Anyway, I’m really proud of my first ever entry to Ludum Dare. It turned out 95% from what I had in mind. I had actually thought about the tunnel racer idea and setting a week prior already, and figured it’s something that scopes well into a 48h limit. And then the theme – although pretty bland, I could fit it right into my story…

Post mortem specifically:

Good Bits

• I used my very familiar tools for art and development. So mostly things went very smoothly with only one or two re-dos or revisions on assets.
• I used some of the XNA 4.0 features which I’ve never touched before, like the default XML pipeline. It worked out brilliantly and I didn’t need to write an editor or content combiners.
• Having had the setting (mood, visual style etc) in my head for a week prior meant no time spent on paper or concept prototyping.
• In-person meet up and dev sessions with the rest of the Cape Town dev community proved to be a lot of fun.

Bad Bits

• I initially used geometery generation for the tunnel itself (excluding obstacles) and initial implementation wasted a lot of time due to a bug in the VertexBuffer data calls. Debugging that was a whole morning. Eventually I ditched it and went for a static pre modeled solution with UV coordinate updates which took like 5 minutes to implement… Doh!
• Sound. Just… sound..
• Lack of play testing – I had to make a change to the random generator after initial submission. It generated impossible situations too often.
• Speed-painting the title/background and story screens. I suck at speed painting, but it had to be done.

Overall I had a blast and will join the next one without doubt. Link to download the game is here : http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=rate&uid=8138

Another fun jam.

I got the idea for my game Friday night, and really had to think how to do it effectively.

What went OK

I used my usual tools : VS2010, XNA 4.0 framework etc, so I got a lot done in very little time and without any problems this time with vertex buffers or other silly problems like that. Except when I inadvertently added instead of multiplied two transformation matrices.

My idea and goal was simple and effective. Not a lot of content was needed to pull it off, and the premise of the game is familiar to anyone.

Had a fun time jamming with FuzzySpoon and learnt a lot again.

What went otherwise

Exactly because the premise is so familiar, I tried to make the game not boring.

Also because of that, I had to make sure it looked and felt the part, so visually it was a challenge to get it right.

Animations. It was the first time ever doing animations in 3D. That took me a few hours to get right, and to get learn the basic implementation and usage.

Not enough people pitched up and took part from in our community.

 

So anyway, entry page is here : http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-31/?action=preview&uid=8138