I have consistently watched one LD go by after another for the past few years, and every time I say I’m going to do it, I get distracted and back out. This time, I am going to make an honest attempt, and I’m getting support from my girlfriend this time around (who is going to try to make her own game). Should be very interesting!

I have a bad habit of changing the tools I use in the middle of projects, so I am not going to hold myself to this list… but this is currently what I’m interested in trying out. I don’t want to lock myself into Android development for this, but I definitely want to use this as an opportunity to determine a sweet flow for porting games in the future, so most of my choices reflect that desire. Web-based would also be nice as I’m still astounded by Notch’s success with Minecraft. Regardless though, I do have plenty of plan Bs.

Hardware: Intel Quad Core I7, 6GB ram, GTX 460 w/ 768MB GDDR5

Platform: Windows (but hopeful for near automatic cross platform support on Linux, Android, and the web as well)

Language: Java

Libraries: libGDX (LWJGL/Slick for gfx backend, box2D for physics), Kryonet for networking (works on Android!)

Tools: Photoshop CS5 and/or Paint.net (2d art), Blender (3d art), sfxr (sound gen), musagi (music), non-stop Pandora (probably tuned to Breaking Benjamin station)

Any other details are too fuzzy to mention, but I think this is a good start… I need to prototype a quick test run in this environment to make sure I don’t waste yet another Ludum Dare.

Well, day 1 didn’t go so well. I got frustrated pretty quickly with using Java/Slick and libGDX together, so I pretty much moved right on to something I’ve been wanting to play with forever… Flixel and/or FlashPunk. After spending most of yesterday learning all of what it is capable of and doing some tests, I finally got a great idea today for what I wanted to do, and so I’m just starting… officially. Here’s my tileset that I’m currently playing with… makes me feel like I’m actually moving forward finally.

Worked out most of the basic tiles needed for the outside area. Wanted to make sure I didn’t limit myself on the road/sidewalk/building sizes, shapes, and directions, and I feel that I’ve covered all the possibilities that I need at the moment. Now to get it loading in the engine.

Just a screenshot from my tile mapping program.

Just way too many distractions this weekend to effectively focus my time/energy on this, and my ideas just started to flow way too late… to make matters worse, I had a horrible time getting Flashpunk to use Pixel Perfect collision on it’s rotations (still doesn’t work right) and the camera was being way too wonky with movement. Regardless, I do have a nice start should I ever decide to pick it back up. “Play” it here (and I use the term “play” loosely).

Working with Panderia on something awesome hopefully for the Jam! Going to use an old license of Torque 2D that I haven’t used in years. Will be doing mostly coding and scripting and helping with some of the level editing… maybe some graphics if I run out of things to do. Looking forward to it!

And if we have a difference of opinion (wink), will fall back to the solo competition, most likely using the same tools (although it will depend on my comfort level with the theme).

My wife and I are going to make another attempt at the jam. We have quite a list of possible engines and programs we could use, but we are hoping to make the theme work with Ren’py, and will probably use Photoshop, SFXR, etc to create any assets we need. Nothing too fancy, but something we can hopefully see through to completion.

I've been streaming for 9 hours, and while I haven't been doing as much coding, art, or music as I'm used to at this point, I'm already happy with the progress I've made! There's a lot less fumbling around and undoing things to make room for other things and just general changing of direction hundreds of times, so this one is going much better than the last few I've been involved in. I've had some good conversations with friends and some other Ludum Darers that stopped in to check out what I was working on (it's a small world after all) and overall a good weekend so far, and I'm looking forward to continuing tomorrow! But now, it is time to sleep.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/medexwl237fxzcu/Screenshot%202017-04-21%2023.00.53.png?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/77qau5ugj4i3mqd/Screenshot%202017-04-22%2001.06.10.png?dl=0

Good luck everyone!

My weekend is already pretty much shot, but the theme possibilities look great so I'm going to do what I can! No time for streaming this time around.

Good luck everyone!