Well, halfway through Monday and I’m still awake. That has to be some sort of accomplishment, right?

Anyway, I’m really proud of my first ever entry to Ludum Dare. It turned out 95% from what I had in mind. I had actually thought about the tunnel racer idea and setting a week prior already, and figured it’s something that scopes well into a 48h limit. And then the theme – although pretty bland, I could fit it right into my story…

Post mortem specifically:

Good Bits

• I used my very familiar tools for art and development. So mostly things went very smoothly with only one or two re-dos or revisions on assets.
• I used some of the XNA 4.0 features which I’ve never touched before, like the default XML pipeline. It worked out brilliantly and I didn’t need to write an editor or content combiners.
• Having had the setting (mood, visual style etc) in my head for a week prior meant no time spent on paper or concept prototyping.
• In-person meet up and dev sessions with the rest of the Cape Town dev community proved to be a lot of fun.

My first LD and I finished! Was absolutely awesome to work in the Cape Town group. And I learnt a load…

Anyway, I didn’t post any continual updates through out. I had to attend a wedding last night which cut into my time, among other things. So apologies for that. But, I cannot believe everything I achieved in 48 hours. Everyone around me made truly awesome games.

Speed to Freedom is a tunnel racer where you need to achieve maximum speed for as long as possible (acceleration is automatic) in order to deliver freedom from the war. You are ALONE in this mission (the theme drives the story).

Obstacles in the way will hamper your progress, and watch out for flying overhead!!

After the spam filter stopped looking at me, I could now register for LD48 no 22. It will be my first one and pretty excited to join the Cape Town community in-person.

Tools are pretty much XNA and Photoshop. I’ll probably skip 3D for this one.

Good luck to all!