Category: Game Design

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.

I took a little longer than I expected to get back from 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?

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.

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

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:

Awesome. Just awesome.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.