What worked well:

• Building a good infrastructure: Clean object system & usable level editor = worth a lot. I only really started building levels around the 40 hour mark, and that worked like a charm.
• Cutting stuff in the end: Music wouldn’t have helped me a lot. Not having an ending was smart too: Everyone who noticed that must have liked the game anyway
• Ruby, together with an ad-hoc autoloading mechanism, made for one of the smoothest coding experiences ever.
• TIME MACHINE! I knew I’d need a backup system sooner or later (turned out to be true), but I really didn’t feel like bothering with Subversion because I always forget to add files etc. and it wastes time, so I just watched Time Machine do its background work every hour. Boy was that a relief.
• Periscope: While my timelapse wasn’t highly interesting, it only took two clicks to create, so no time wasted here for a low score

What didn’t really work:

• People had various problems with the gameplay (controls, motion sickness, …), and even if I knew that earlier, I probably could not have done much about it except getting into a panic.
• Needed to do more optimizing than I usually do, and some levels are still slow. Will revisit this and try to improve on this from the Gosu library’s side.
• I had a cold that made thinking pretty hard. Anything that involved maths was buggy, which caused a minor panic just before the deadline. It also made IRC very hard to follow

Next time’s plan: Keep the solid workflow, hope that the game concept works out better with regards to the Fun, and consequently Overall category, try to be more experimental technically. Can’t wait

Also, did anyone play the game with a gamepad? Would be cool to know for the next time, because it was hard to decide between a small ending screen and gamepad support in the last few minutes Thanks!

Introducing ‘Of Robots & Groglots’, which is a cross between an old favorite of mine, Star Fox 64, and the minimal and popular Helicoper Flash game (see link if you want to be prepared for minimalist controls):

The whole game is controlled using only two buttons, of which one is usually permanently down; the microplanets add another touch of minimalism. Downloads:

• Windows version
• Mac version
• Source only version (for Linux)

These links have been updated to point to a version that includes 1) a two-line fix for two levels that were unplayably slow on some systems, and 2) a one-line fix for a bug that could stop your show, depending on your style of playing. Other minor bugs and balancing haven’t been touched. If you want to see the original version, replace ‘opt’ by ‘final’ in the links. Thanks!

Be prepared for:

• No music — no need to stop Winamp
• Gamepad support!
• Needing a minute until you can maneuver as smooth as you want.
• Two interwoven storylines (sort of) and very different levels. If you get stuck, see the Readme file for a cheat so you can inspect them.

Last foodphoto:

The timelapse is available on YouTube. I caught a cold and look pretty exhausted =) - and it’s probably only interesting if you know the game.

According to my To Do list, I’ve been late for the last four checkpoints, now lagging 44 minutes behind… panic panic panic! …actually I already ruled music out in favor of more levels.
If anyone wants to play a two-level demo version, it’s here. Instructions are given in the first level briefing, but of course there’s minimal need for them.
And for the record, here’s my breakfast and lunch:

Nom!

Hmhmhm, I’ve been annoyingly lazy and slow today, and I know it will come back at me tomorrow — but at least I managed to have the first playable level

This game is also inspired by the popular one-button helicopter game, but transferred into polar coordinates, with an overworld, enemies and kind-of quests. So it’s my minimalist version of Starfox on microplanets, or something
In other news, I found some leftover veggie BBQ stuff to photograph… and eat! Nom.

Okay, so here’s my flickr’d deskshot:

Got sick last night and exchanged the planned house partying for some medicine. Only more reason to focus on some desktop zen and healthy food during the compo.
Timelapse is set in place and I might give the foodcompo a shot

Nine Step Masterplan (as if one of them had ever worked during compos):

1. have EVERYTHING (libs, food, tools…) set up; no figuring out of things during the 48h anymore
2. set alarm clock to 4am (starting time here), ponder about theme in half-sleep
3. get up at 9, don’t worry ONE BIT if idea doesn’t really match the theme, code like a madman
4. 13:37 Yoga break!
5. 18:00 have game technically finished, leave for local ‘Long Night of the Theaters’ (only watching it, not acting!)
6. 0:00 show up at minimal/electro/house party as promised
7. 3:00 sleep
8. wake up in a panic and build content until contest ends
9. after deadline, do a quick Windows port

(I have this feeling telling me that only the house party will happen as planned.) I’ll try to write a readable game using my own library, Gosu. Tools: C++ and Xcode or Ruby and TextMate, Photoshop with Wacom for graphics, maybe GarageBand + The Wiinstrument for music, and of course SFXr

With all the C/Python/SDL-based libraries mentioned here, I’d like to advertise my/our gamedev library, Gosu. It has originally been my private library, spread only via ICQ/IRC to interested people, until I made it public to use it for my LD3. That is a while ago, and in the meantime, it has been used for some LD entries by me and other people, also for more serious projects, and is actually documented.

Long story short, Gosu is a 2D game development library for Ruby and C++. I guess the C++ version is a bit too heavy to learn until Friday *and* actually use, though. The Ruby version gets you up and running quickly.

Pro (compared to your generic SDL wrapper): *Very* fast graphics with rotations and all that, because the library was designed to use OpenGL; an API which tries not to get in your creativity’s way; examples on how to integrate it with ImageMagick and the Chipmunk physics library; serious OS X support.
Contra: Linux port misses gamepad support; can’t handle too complex text input well.

If you would like to give it a try, the library can be found at http://code.google.com/p/gosu.