Yeah, I’m participating Ludum Dare for the first time. Fortunately I’ve keys to (un)success at my hand:
– I’m unprepared
– I’m using unknown framework for me: LÖVE.
– I’ve family and not much spare time this weekend.
Anyways I try to succeed and I’ve still time to prepare tools and schedule. I need to plan my time well and keep things simple.
Although, I haven’t used LÖVE before, I know Lua pretty well and have used it before in other projects. I was also thinking at using LWJGL but figured out, that I might get more done in LÖVE considering my time restrictions. And, yes, I know, I could’ve participated the Jam but having more time at hand may not end up in better result.

Good luck to all other LD’ers!

I decided to wait till theme is published before getting some sleep. I hope, I can dream something up because at the moment I don’t have any idea in my mind. At least, nothing which could be implemented in my limited time frame.

I continued my good preparations yesterday by playing Minecraft with my son and installing some stuff to help me to create graphical assets.

Sorry for bad language but I’m really tired now.
Good Night and good luck!

Coming up with an decent implementable idea, which would not revolve around small island or planet was quite difficult. 24H left and I’ve spent my time so far by sleeping, eating, moving furniture and having family time while trying to think about the theme. Maybe I should’ve told to my family, that I’m participating LD#48, but that’s one sure way to me to not get anything done at all. Maybe next time, when I’ve made decision to participate a bit earlier than two days beforehand. Sofar I’ve got this:

Design for the game

Should be simple enough to be implemented in time. From a single particle’s view the world is infinite but from our perspective it’s miniscule. I got the idea from this cartoon. ( Sorry, couldn’t find the original author/source even with the signature on the top right corner. )

Inspiration

If I”d more artsy type I could use some twist like this “The Large Ego Collider”:
http://alexdriver.blogspot.com/2011/07/large-ego-collider.html

Anyways, your task is to survive and not cause another Big Bang!

I did it again. Instead of coding I tried to get debugger working. I managed to do it after I recompiled Löve sources by hand. I almost threw my hands in air and was going to install Sublime Text for Linux, because without debugging Eclipse/Koneki ain’t so sexy. I’m glad I did got (remote) debugging working, although I certainly may not need it during the next 24 hours but I may need it in future. In past I’ve been in situations, where I’d have needed Lua debugging ( other than print to console )

So, I’m using Koneki plugin for Eclipse in Linux. There may be better text editors for Lua/Löve but for Linux not so many.
http://www.eclipse.org/koneki/ldt/

Other possible editors ( Google if you wish to know more ):
Decoda( Commercial, has debugger )
Sublime Text 2 ( Commercial, great reviews )
Notepad++ ( with modified lua.xml can autocomplete löve -code )
LuaEdit ( Updated recently )

Argh… Why am I even blogging about text editors? I’ll get coffee and then back to code.

Ok. I managed to spit something out, during the last 6-8 hours. Most of the Sunday went on traveling with family, so my effective working hours were well after everybody else had settled to sleep. I could’ve had a bit more hours into the game if I’d not started the development in wrong mood. Again, I started to overengineer thing, which led to not getting features done as  I was pondering about miniscule details or some secondary things. Fortunately in the nick of time I got myself together and crunched the basic gameplay together. I’d to drop a lot of planned features but managed to implement a simple particle effects. Or, to be honest there weren’t much to implement as Löve tends to make things supereasy. With some other framework I might not have gotten this far, at least, unless it was familiar but still… The familiar framework would’ve been OGRE or XNA. I might even develop the concept further at some day.

Graphics… Well, they’ve something retro in them, or not. I’m not much of an artist but with more time I could’ve come up with something more aesthetically pleasant.  Sound or music: Who needs it? Darn. Well, there’s always next time. Actual gameplay… Overrated. With these words, I welcome you to enjoy my first but not last Ludum Dare entry:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=11801

Now, off to bed and then I’ll try to game something much better…other LD entries.

After some extended sleep and being tired for the rest of the day I think I’m able to come up with a post-mortem.

I submitted some kind of game after getting things together withing last 5-6 hours. I’m not actually sure how much time I spent with developing the game but effective coding time was around four hours and few more went into researching how to do stuff in Löve. I spent another 6 hours doing stuff not actually getting the game done like setting up Lua debugger or creating too ambitious OO system in Lua. First day went by overslepting and not figuring out what to do with the theme while I’d move furniture. The next night went by doing non-relevant stuff and the next day went by traveling. Fortunately I got into the zone in the last moments and was able to finish basic gameplay in time. The result was not pretty and not what I asked for but at least I delivered.

What went right:

• I managed to submit a game
• Basic gameplay was quite as I thought, yet unpolished.
• Last hours’ crunch time was super-effective!
• I got an game idea: Something I could develop further or use as an example to learn a new framework.
• I learned to use Löve and I liked it!

What went wrong:

• I spent too much time trying to figure out what to do with the theme.
• I didn’t prepare at all.
• I had little time reserved for LD and couldn’t use that time effectively
• I didn’t tell anyone else, except the whole world by publishing in this blog.
• I spent time doing stuff, which didn’t help the cause at all.

What to do better next time:

• Prepare tools beforehand
• Plan ahead
• Come up with on idea earlier. ( Brainstorming or mind maps to help )
• Tell family beforehand.
• Arrange time. Do a time schedule for LD.

Here’s my previous post with initial thoughts afterwards and submission links:
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2012/04/22/finally-submitted-almost-failure/

Good morning!

Again I’m not prepared and I’m also using something I haven’t done before. Fortunately JavaScript and OpenGL ES is familiar. Initially I was going to continue experimenting with my C++ framework but it ain’t ready for rapid development. So I’d to settle with three.js. Last time I used Lua based framework Löve, which is great but I’m always up for some challenge.

Ok, I spent half hour pondering the theme and settled for an idea similar to Missile Command. Other ideas were pretty similar to what I’ve already seen on other posts. I’m pretty sure my 48h interpretation of Dungeon Keeper or similar switche-roo would’ve not been so nice. Yeah, my game’s twist is that you’re the guy bombing the city. Okay, I think I might add goats too…

Have a nice Jam, folks.

Summary of the first day:
Got an idea.
Chose technology.
Made some food.
Took a nap.
Run some errands.
Sleepy again.
Took another nap.
One day passed, yay!

Tomorrow we’ll see if I’m too tired to get anything done.