LD14 was the first Ludum Dare that I managed to submit something, the instantly forgettable Giant Laser of Doom. This time around I’m hoping to do better. I have a very comfortable new chair and a new desk, so finally my home office is beginning to feel like a room that I actually want to be in. On top of that, my wife knows that I’m taking part in LD15 and has told me that she’s ok with the fact that I’m not going to be around much from Saturday evening onwards. So, all in all, I have no excuses.

I’m planning to use one or more of the following tools:

• Unity3d
• sfxr
• Paint.NET
• Blender
• Visual Studio 2008

Good luck to everyone taking part. I’m looking forward to seeing what you come up with.

Unity Test. The URL works from HTML, but if it doesn’t work from WordPress then I guess I’ll be providing downloadable exes. Yeah, that’s quirky all right. It doesn’t work for me.

(more…)

The comments I received so far made me realise that people were having difficulty running the program as I was using Python 2.6 and didn’t provide an executable.

So, without further ado, here’s a Windows executable. (http://tinyurl.com/dg6xr5)

Thanks to everyone who commented.

— Rod

I’m calling it a day as I need to get up for work in less than 6 hours, so here’s my entry for LD14. Given my lack of available time this weekend I am surprised to get as far as I have. Laser of Doom is in a playable state, even if it’s not exactly cutting edge. For me this is a personal triumph – it’s the first time for about 8 months that I’ve had success in one of my own projects. Those I’ve been doing for work have been rock-solid, well-written pieces of code, but I’ve just not had the required focus on personal projects.

Download the source here (http://tinyurl.com/cfnmot)

Edit: backport to Python 2.5.4 here (http://tinyurl.com/csmly9)

Edit: Windows executable here (http://tinyurl.com/dg6xr5)

Edit: and yes, I did run out of time for making levels. The original plan was to gradually make it harder by including random obstacles, plus locked doors with keys, and a score that would be greatly enhanced by picking up bonus items.

Now I’ll get back to that game that I promised my daughter. Thanks LD14.

Here’s a shot of the Giant Laser of Doom.

I didn’t start work on this until 9.12pm as I had a lot of things to do today (visit bank, go to museum, take a bike ride, cut grass, etc). It’s now 2am (UK time), my brain is fried and my body is knackered.

I’ve concentrated on keeping my entry as simple as possible because I know that my time is limited. I got thinking about the theme when I was visiting the museum. I just liked the idea of a giant laser of doom, erasing everything in its path, darkening the screen as it went.

I figure that I have until 4am on Monday morning local time, which is just as well as I’ve got a few commitments tomorrow, but let’s see what I can do with the remaining time.

Just over 4 hours to go and I’m looking at the possible themes, wondering which one I can do justice to in the 5 or 6 hours that are going to be available to me this weekend. I came close to talking myself out of it, but what the hell – I’m going to go for it.

Back in the days of the BBC model B (yeah, I’m old) a procedure in BBC BASIC was defined with DEF PROC and invoked with PROC followed by the procedure name – spaces optional. Let’s just say that I won’t be calling the procedure named RASTINATE this weekend.

Here is some random text posted from Jan 1st 2000. I’m supposed to be logging in via a dial up modem to make sure that my company’s UNIX boxes don’t fall over, but instead I’m rambling on about a thing called Unity3D that hasn’t been invented yet.

Anyway, here’s a state of the ark screenshot for your viewing pleasure.