This was my first, and definitely not last Ludum Dare competition. It was great fun, I learned many new things and most importantly I finished and released a project.

The first day started out with taking my time and thinking about the theme and what could I pull off (programming wise). I decided that side scroller shouldn’t be so difficult. I opened up GIMP and started drawing some nonsense – rectangles and stuff. After that I started working on the engine, copying code and layout from previous projects (collision detection, Game-States and other basic functions). Shortly after I got my first picture on the screen and after that I started working on the level editor. It took rest of the day to finish it, and only in the evening I started creating my first level, which opened up lots of new problems like player movement (gravity, in particular).

Second day was purely devoted to creating levels and other visual stuff (basically everything that there is to see), which was pretty challenging since I didn’t have any ideas as to what I really wanted. I experimented with audio too (sfxr is awesome), but I decided that there are more important things to worry about, so it was left behind. Evening came very fast, I was really exhausted and in the last few hours I really started rushing things, which decreased the overall quality. A few bugs got left behind, so a note to be taken (Get my priorities straight).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dnhsAnhgoA

I handed in my entry at about 1 AM after spending on it approximately 30 hours and writing about 1500 lines of code. Job well done.

Overall, I’ve learned lots of new things and most importantly I know what to focus on learning next (like GIMP, drawing, game physics, layout).

Things to focus on in the future:

• Time management and priorities
• Got to learn a framework or develop some kind of engine (to avoid implementing basic stuff on-the-fly)
• Focus more on game-play rather than engine
• Drawing and using GIMP
• Be ready to compile for multiple platforms