For this competition, I’ll be using javascript and canvas, for easy deployment and quick iteration.

Also, here’s what I’m having for dinner tonight!

tl;dr: I’m in.

It’s been more than a day since the end of my first ever participation in the 48 hour Ludum Dare competition, and it’s time to take a retrospective look at what I did. The goal here is to spot where I made mistakes, where I did well, and what I can do differently in the future.

Let me start off by saying that I’m already very proud of how well I did. This not only is the first ludum dare I’ve done and completed, it’s also the first non-trivial game project I’ve undertaken and completed. That being said, there’s still plenty of room for improvement. Let’s see what happened after the bump…
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Okay, this was such a learning experience. I was able to make it in on time, with 15 minutes or so of grace time. I had to put in a somewhat inferior game that you cannot win, but ah well, it’s mostly functional. You’re a lolcat, and you must placate zombies! Use left/right or a/d to move, and spacebar to placate. Play it here!

Also, here’s my source. Here be dragons. Beware.

I’m planning on doing a post-mortem analyzing what I did, what I’ve learned, and what I’m going to do next time. You will want to read it because I’m so gosh-darned witty. Right? RIGHT? Good!

Bye for now, and I look forward to playing everyone’s games and rating them (fairly)!

I’ve got something packaged enough to be able to upload it. It’s still in progress, but a lot of the basics are there. There aren’t any real world consequences, so you won’t die, even though you’re losing lives. I’m a benevolent god, after all! Game after the bump.

You may notice some very obvious bugs. I’m sure these will reassure you as to the quality of my code. Known bugs include:

• Getting cat to moonwalk backwards.
• Cat cloning, you naughty evil professor you.
• Zombies moving weirdly compared to you and reality. D’oh.
• Immortal cats.

If you notice any more, let me know, please!

Edit: Oh. It might be nice to know the controls, huh. Left/Right or a/d for movement, and spacebar for pacifist-attack. Simple, huh.

I’ve been making some nice progress so far, although I’ve had to make a few quick adjustments in my plan due to dramatic overestimation of my programming ability during my design stage. (6 different skills?! 6 different types of NPCs?! Madness!)

Here’s a little screenshot of what’s happening so far, though animation is not very well depicted in it.

I can’t seem to go lie down without my mind running over and over what I have left to do. So much for rest. I’m glad that it hasn’t been 24 hours yet, though. Maybe I really can pull this off.

Well this should be interesting! This will be my first time participating in ludum dare, and besides a few small unfinished game projects, I really haven’t done much of note in the gamespace. There’s lots to learn, and lots to accomplish. I hope to do plenty of both, and will be writing extensively about my experiences along the way.

I’m a python programmer at heart, and will be using pyglet in this competition, as they’re both the most familiar to me. What’s unfamiliar, however, is this trepidation I feel due to never having participated in anything like this before. Will I be able to cut through all the extraneous hangups that I usually get caught up in, and put out a pretty nice game before time is up?

In order to do this, I’ll need more mental discipline than usual. So first and foremost, I’m going to write down some Laws on my whiteboard. What? Hmm? Well of COURSE you can see them! Here’s a very broad overview.

• Look before I leap
• Generate, generate, generate
• Prune, prune, prune
• Refine, refine, refine
• Build, submit, relax

I’m going to allocate about 4 hours in the beginning to plan the initial concept, as a very liberal gift. If I end up being satisfied with my design document before then, then that’s all to the good! After that, I will spend the first day recklessly attempting to implement features decided upon in the design document. Woman scorned hath no fury like a competitive programmer. When the second day rolls around, I will take another hour or three to look at what I’ve got, where I need to be, and what I need to prune. This is where I will probably shed some tears, having to throw out ideas, but it must be done.

After that, I will enter lockdown. No new features. No new ideas. Polish polish polish! Finally, at the end I will spend some time tying things up, making the build, submitting, then blogging about my experiences. Followed by some relaxation, support for people who need help playing my game should something go wrong (oh noes!), and enjoying and rating other peoples’ games.

Now that I’ve got a plan, let’s see how closely I will stick to it. I might insert a few micro-loops of generate, prune, polish in there, depending on how well things go. In any case, I’m as ready as I’ll ever be, and I wish everyone good luck, or some reasonable non-mystical facsimile!