I haven’t written this yet because ChronoLapse hasn’t been cooperating and I wanted to post my timelapse at the same time. After several days of wrestling with various video programs, I finally got my timelapse video uploaded. If not for the video, enjoy it for the music:

Since I’m sure another wall of text on the front page would be annoying, I’m going to let you hit the break if you want to read on. I’m going to babble on about my life as well, so you are hereby officially warned.

Ludum Dare 22 came at a very interesting time in my life. Midway through fall semester,  I was left with a very now-or-never personal realization: if I don’t get my shit together, I am not going to make it through this computer science program. I got out of high school with a 3.5 GPA, but college is different. For the last two years that I’ve been attending, I’ve been just BARELY getting by in the program. Sure, I would pass some classes with A’s or B’s, but in the spring, for the third time, I will be retaking a class I couldn’t get through the first time around.

Thus, in November, I left my student computer technician job to focus on school. I still didn’t make it through the class I’ll be retaking, but I’m pretty sure I got through my other computer science class. Anyway, the point is I’m at a point where I feel like I need to start moving my life in the right direction, hence my decision to take part in this Ludum Dare. What better way to start moving towards owning your own game studio than getting off your ass and actually making something?

As all of you that have played it are no doubt aware, the game isn’t the best:

• Very little “gameplay”
• Difficult to determine the health of the dudes
• Game becomes literally impossible to progress any further beyond the second evolution in generation 3 due to an unknown bug

Even with all of the bugs in the game and the fact that it is 100% guaranteed not to win, I’m still glad I finished! I tackled this as a solo project, so I did everything myself from scratch:

• All of the code from scratch (C# with XNA but nothing more)
• All of the sounds from scratch via sfxr (it works for LD)
• All of the graphics from scratch in Paint.NET (not the best but this still means I’m working on my graphic capabilities)

Granted, I’m sure none of the stuff I’ve made for this particular Ludum Dare compares to most of the other entries. I’m also fairly certain that next to no one is going to read this. I am perfectly alright with all of that because the completion of this game marks the first “complete” game I’ve made outside of school. However small of a gap it is, I have finally busted a hole in the personal wall preventing me from moving on with some of the major goals in life. There is a very long way to go, but I finally feel like I’ve taken the first legitimate step.

And no, I did not include a damn kitten.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 24th, 2011 at 2:19 am and is filed under LD #22. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.