Just a reminder that you have 5 days to finish your research for Mini-LD #9. The rules are:

• You may use any code you write between now and Friday, May 22nd at 9:00pm EST, but ONLY if it pertains to playing or processing sound.
• You will be provided with a resource pack containing sound assets for use in your game.
• Sounds will be provided in the following formats:
  • MP3/OGG
  • XM
  • WAV
  • General MIDI songfiles
• Due to the size of the resource pack, I will make all sounds available on a webpage so that you can preview them and select the ones you want.
• All other code for your project must be written from-scratch, during the compo.

Here is the original announcement. Good luck, and see you on friday!

Submissions for Ludum Dare #14 may have just ended, but don’t retire your braincells and pack your coffee mugs away quite yet. Because on May 22 at 9PM EST… destroysound presents… a Ludum Dare production…

MINI LD #9
May 22, 2009, 9PM EST-May 24, 2009, 9PM EST

Yes, it’s a little early to announce this, but I want to make sure everyone has some time to adequately prepare. I’m going to spoil the theme slightly here by telling you that whatever tools you decide to use, you will need to be able to have access to a computer (gasp) with a soundcard (shocking) and some method of replicating sound (i suggest headphones or speakers) as well as an environment that can play back one of the following types of sound/music files:

• .WAV sounds
• .MP3 or .OGG tracks
• .MID music files
• .XM modules

The more of these you can support, the better.

Any code you write with this intent between now and then is acceptable for use in the compo. That means you can’t write your game now, but any code you write (or have written) that experiments with sound, manipulates sounds or otherwise mangles/destroys your audio interface is A-OK to use. All game logic must be developed in the 48 hour timelimit.

In addition (this is not required), you might want to get familiar with some sort of audio editing tool/music tracking software/thing to make your soundcard flip out, if you so wish. For free tools of this sort, check out Audacity, MilkyTracker or Pure Data. In addition, people have written some nice audio generation tools specifically for LD and game design: check out SFXR if you haven’t already. If you have any other suggestions, feel free to respond to this post and let us know what you use.

Aaaaand.. that’s all you need to know about MiniLD #9 right now. I’ll make another announcement after the post-compo hysteria dies down. Hopefully you are intrigued enough to give it a shot. See you then!

Time for another mini Ludum Dare competition. This one will take place on the 10th and 11th of January, since the first weekend is very close to the holidays.

The idea behind this one is, to take all of your entries and bind them together in what would look as a single game. To achieve this, this MiniLD will have to themes. The main theme, the red line of the competition, will be the same for all, and set by me. The second theme you can pick out for yourself from a list of themes and reserve it for yourself.

Technical details, start time, etc. will follow.