So I know that a lot of you guys played my game, “Tiny’s World” (the one with the mouse), and I know that many [all] of you, including me, experienced severe lag. Though I didn’t put this in the game info, that game was the first that I have ever written. I’m here to say that I realised why the lag was so unbelievably high and the framerate, so low. Basically, I have been placing (“blitting”, as PyGame calls it) images on the screen, when actually I should be blitting sprites as they are all constantly moving. To fix this, I changed the pixel format of all my images using Surface.convert_alpha() which converts the Surface (image) to a sprite form. When I changed all my regular game objects, I increased my framerate from 15 to 17 FPS. This was much to my disdain, as I expected more. But then, I proceeded to change my (moving) background images to sprites, and I managed to get the framerate to in excess of 100 FPS!

What I’m here to say is, I love ALL you guys and the LD. Thanks to all you guys who run it and contribute it. And thank you for all those helpful (constructively criticising) comments you made about my game and for all the suggestions which I am currently working on adding into my game.

And by the way, I am working on a post compo version of my game and if anyone is interested in it. It wont lag [or will lag much, much less] and I will be adding features you have expressed your interesting in in your comments when you played it.

Thanks again for the LD, as I’m learning more and more about Python; both its strengths and weaknesses.

If you want to play the old version of my game (for the time being, before I upload a new version), it’s here:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=10594

As the title suggests, I will be writing a postmortem soon. Just wanted to say that you still have a day to play my amazing game; now with an OSX version! This is my first fully complete game, and first Ludum Dare entry, so I would really appreciate it if a few more people rated my game:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=10594

Thank you all for your helpful comments and support

And EDIT:

I have rated 106 entries, and that’s all I can do

Here are some of my favorites:

So far, my favourite games are:

Burger Defender- Cool idea for a game

Bipolar- Really cool how you can have the drugs and change what everything looks like 

The Tiny World of Fiorella- Really good graphics and probably my favourite overall so far

SubAtomic- Absolutely hilarious! 

YESH! My coolness is at 42!

So far, my favourite games are:

Burger Defender- Cool idea for a game

Bipolar- Really cool how you can have the drugs and change what everything looks like

The Tiny World of Fiorella- Really good graphics and probably my favourite overall so far

SubAtomic- Absolutely hilarious!

I know that pretty much no one’s going to read this, but I posted a link to the version of my game with instructions on how to run it on OSX.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=10594

Well, all in all I’d say that my first entry was a success! There was a few mishaps and perhaps some things I could improve on, but for a first programming competition attempt, I was surprised at how well the end result turned out. I have to say that Ludum Dare is a great thing, because I’ve started a a few “games” before but none of them ever ended up getting finished enough to be called games, but this was different. I think I can safely say that I made a “game” this weekend and I’m quite happy about it. I hope to participate in future LD48′s and I had a great time in this one!

Happy coding guys!

–Topaz

I was originally aiming to go into the actual competition, but since I realised I could make the game so much better with the extra day, and because this is my first competition entry, I decided to enter the Jam.

Here are some screenshots from my final Beta testing version:

Level Selecter

Title Screen

I’d say that I’ve made some fairly good progress today. I have a functional main menu and pause menu as well as a character with the ability to jump and a randomly animated background.

Working Desktop + Progress

Hey guys, this is my first time at making a game for a competition.

For anyone who cares, I will most likely be using Python with the module PyGame for the code, as well as Garageband and GIMP for my audio and graphics.

Also, I’m going to be using my 15-inch Sony Vaio laptop with a 27-inch LG monitor to give me more space to work on

Good luck everyone!

–Topaz