This will be my first game jam, and hopefully also my first non-mod, non-prototype game.

This Week

1. Warming up, which will essentially be testing out tools and techniques I don’t have enough experience with.
2. Speeding up my laptop
3. Some university related stuff
4. Cooking (healthy) food for 48 hours
5. Explaining my girlfriend why I’m doing this (and not going out with her)

My Tools

• Building: Unity
  I’ve been using Unity for 2 years now, and I still like it. Luckily I have a Pro version that I can use, which has some nice new features like pathfinding, an awesome particle system tool and of course dynamic lightning. Not sure if I will use any of those, but it’s good to have.
• Coding: MonoDevelop
  Unity comes with MonoDevelop, Unity is partly integrated with it, the auto-complete is nice and I’m used to it, so I will be using it to code my C# scripts.
• Music: LMMS
  Sound, and therefore music, is the only thing I have no experience with, so I will have to practice it a lot before I start. I also have to find some nice VSTs which I can use. I do know something about music so I hope I can produce something worthy.
• Sound: Audacity
  When I have to do something with sound, which rarely happens, I use Audacity. I will probably be recording sounds with my smartphone and/or laptop microphones, and I know how to remove things like noise with this tool. Also editing and looping sound works pretty nice with this free tool.
• Graphics:Photoshop
  I love Photoshop, I have been using it from time to time in the past 10 years, I’m far from a pro but I know my way around in it. And, most importantly, it works really awesome with my Wacom.
• Modelling: Blender
  I usually use 3ds Max for 3D modelling, but I only have a student license for this, so I use Blender as substitute. Since the new interface I no longer really hate it, but I do not have a numpad on my laptop… Anyway, I want to try to make a 2D game, so I won’t use it extensively. Otherwise I will have to fall back to good ol’ 3ds Max.
• Motivation: Spotify
  I always work with music on. (Unless I’m doing hard mathematics) I usually listen to a few styles, sorted by requirement: For creativity: death metal, progressive metal and prog. rock. For speed: drum ‘n bass, deadmau5 (yes, that’s a genre) and industrial. For inspiration: minimal classical music. And for relaxation: Eddie Vedder, Foo Fighters, Muse, or any of my other favourite bands, that no longer need attention (because I know every single tone).
• Communication: Twitter - This Blog
  I never tweet, but I would love to give updates and give answers to questions. (Not that I would know why you would do that.) Follow: “@Siewart_”. I will be posting some blog posts as well, because the process of creating a game is awesome, inspirational and informative. (It’s also nice to look back when you are done)
• Timelapse: Chronolapse
  Everyone seems to do it, so I will do it as well. Also: I love timelapses .

My hardware:

• My old HP Elitebook 8530w (Dual-Core 2.8Ghz, 4GB, Quadro FX770M);
• Samsung Galaxy S2 (Ice Cream Sandvich);
• Wacom Intuos 3;
• A random mouse;
• Hopefully a keyboard

Warm-up
For my warm-up a theme generator gave me a (cliché-ish) theme: Post-Apocalyptic Steam Punk. But I vowed to use it so I will.

Basic idea: A 2D sidescroller where you have to use nuclear waste to mutate plants, animals and NPCs in order to solve puzzles involving steam engines. Don’t know if I have enough time for something like this, but I want to go through the whole process once so I might make one short level, without tutorial. I will post it when it’s done, if it’s done.

One last thing
One last thing: Good luck and above all, have fun, my dear opponents!

Tags: audacity, blender, chronolapse, LMMS, photoshop, Siewart, Spotify, twitter, unity

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 17th, 2012 at 11:56 am and is filed under LD #23. 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.