Hi, this is my first Ludum Dare, but I’ve been following the gamedev community for a long time, and always working on projects (never really finished one though).  This is my slightly late I’m In! post.

I can’t tell if my idea is overly ambitious or not yet.  I think it’s do-able.  Here’s the gist.  You have to escape from your own planet.  It’s a small, but very dense planet with a strong gravitational field.  You can run around its entire circumference in 10 seconds.  Unfortunately your quaint little planet is about to be bombarded by meteors from all directions.  You have to dodge the deadly meteors as they impact your planet, but they’re also your ticket out.  By climbing the mounds of fallen meteorites, you can reach higher altitudes where the atmosphere and gravitational field quickly thin out.  The higher you go, the less hold gravity has on you and the higher you can jump.  If you can just get to the top of the atmosphere, you can reach escape velocity with a single leap, and you’re free!

There is obviously a lot of physics involved here, so I might not even get around to art, but I’m OK with that.  My tools?

• Python
• Box2D
• SFML/OpenGL

This is my first project using SFML and I’ve only dabbled in Box2D so this is a huge learning experience!  I’m well under way though, I’ll post a screenshot when I have something interesting to look at.

Progress!

The big circle is the planet, the smaller blobs are asteroids, the tiny rectangle is YOU!  I’ve got gravity and physics in place thanks to Box2D, and the mechanic of running around the planet is pretty fun and something I always wanted to put into a game.  So much more to do, but good start!  5:30 am, time to sleep now!

for a description of the idea: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2011/08/20/id-call-it-escape-velocity-if-it-werent-already-taken/

I have a lot I’m supposed to do this weekend, but the themes look so good that I can’t resist saying..I’m in! Somehow I will build a game-like thing this weekend.

My last game-jam game was an HTML5 Canvas game with custom Javascript, but this time I’m going to try phaser.io, which I’ve never used before. And I’m going to try Typescript instead of plain JS, which I’ve also never done before. If I make any art it will be with Photoshop and it will be lo-fi.

Have a great compo/jam everybody!