Categories
Game Design Game Development Geek / Technical Linux Game Development Personal Development

LD#12: Another Dinner

Dinner #2

I ordered the vegetable entree from a Thai restaurant, and the person on the phone asked me what kind of meat I would like. That’s why there is chicken. I also asked for vegetable egg rolls, which were smaller than I expected, but they did have only vegetables in them.

Categories
Game Design Game Development Geek / Technical Linux Game Development Personal Development

LD#12: First Half of Ludum Dare is Gone

As of this writing there are only 23.5 hours left in the competition.

And my project is in bad shape. I have some decent notes, but the actual implementation is lagging. I have to remember that I still need to create art and sounds, not just code.

Will I make it? I should, even if it means cutting back on the scope of my initial design. I haven’t been writing as much code as I would have liked, but I’m not sure how much of it is due to the fact that I’m still learning TDD and how much of it is due to the fact that I’m practically reimplementing code that I’ve already written. Still, before my last break, I found that my coding time has been very productive, so perhaps I’ll see a working game sooner than I think.

Categories
Game Design Game Development Geek / Technical Linux Game Development Personal Development

LD#12: Back from Lunch

I took a little longer than I expected to get back from lunch.

Lunch

That’s a Turkey Twister sandwich on pretzel bread and fries, and I ordered a basket of tater tots. As you can see, I tried to make a tower. Maybe it is more like a ziggurat?

Categories
Game Design Game Development Geek / Technical Linux Game Development Personal Development

LD#12: Tower Defender Initial Design

Here is the initial design I’ve come up with. Over a year ago I wrote down a one-liner idea about defending a castle, and these notes flesh it out a bit more.

Tower Defender initial design

I want a microphone because I really do want my knight to say “STAB!” when you mouse over him.

Categories
Game Design Game Development Geek / Technical Linux Game Development Personal Development

LD#12: Breakfast is Awesome!

Since so many people got a kick out of my Awesome! brand paper towels, I thought I’d juxtapose them with my Optimum Power cereal:

Breakfast

Awesome. Just awesome.

Categories
Game Design Game Development Geek / Technical Linux Game Development Personal Development

LD#12: So the Theme Is Tower…

Last time Minimalist surprised everyone. This time, Tower did. It’s weird how surprising it is when it was voted upon!

The IRC channel is filled with talk about what can be done. I spent the first 30 minutes eating dinner.

First Meal

I made vegetable stir fry and rice. The rice came out surprisingly well. I also put hummus on pita, and then put the stir fry in it to make LD-approved sandwiches. I washed it all down with tutti-frutti flavored Jarritos.

I’m not sure what to do with the theme yet.

Categories
Game Design Game Development Geek / Technical Linux Game Development Personal Development

LD#12: The Opening Ceremonies

I know it’s a bit hokey, but since the Olympics are happening today, I thought that Ludum Dare needed its own pyrotechnics.

Enjoy the Ludum Dare Opening Ceremonies!

I’m cross posting my Ludum Dare posts here and at LudumDare.com.

Categories
Game Design Game Development Geek / Technical Linux Game Development Personal Development

LD#12: The Office of GBGames

I only managed to get it clean enough to sit in comfortably a few weeks ago.

Desk photo

Yes, there are three separate chairs in a small room.

Categories
Game Design Game Development Geek / Technical Linux Game Development Personal Development

My Tips for Ludum Dare

While SolHSA’s tips are useful, and mrfun’s tips are hilarious, I decided to post my own list of tips for Ludum Dare.

Here is the summary list:

  • Be prepared.
  • Meet the competition.
  • Whatever you think will be easy, do something simpler.
  • “You can only code fast by coding well.”
  • Have fun.
Categories
Game Design Game Development Geek / Technical Linux Game Development Personal Development

Let the Games Begin!

In about 15 hours, the theme for Ludum Dare #12 will be announced and the 48 hour game development competition will start.

Once again, I’ll be using C++, SDL, Makefiles, and vim. This time I will be practicing my unit test fu, which may or may not be a mistake in a coding competition based on speed. We’ll see. My office is actually cleaned up, so I can avoid the back pains of using my couch for the entire competition.

Good luck to all who are participating! Let’s make some games!

Oh, and I guess there is some other global competition starting today, too.