So, got lots of scribbles out, and lots of ideas on how to first progress – the only problem being, actually progressing!  I’ve not used XNA properly before, so this is a bit of an interesting learning experience.  Thankfully there’s shed-loads of documentation, and if I get really really stuck I know a couple of people I can ask for advice.  Heck, the last time I did any kind of serious programming, it was in DarkBASIC!

Anyway – I’ve got a project up, got a font in, and making a ‘punters’ class for all those Cavern Club patrons to be.

Bovril toast and orange juice breakfast

So!  Woke up at half 7 this morning, took a peek at the theme, and then went back to bed for a while to think about it.  Caverns, eh?

Eventually got up properly and made bovril toast and 200ml of orange juice for breakfast!  Yum!  Liquified cow.

Been doing some brainstorming on the pad you can see to the left there – I’ve got an idea I rather like:

Alternative Club Tycoon: The Cavern Club

You own and run “The Cavern Club” – a struggling nightclub for the goth/metal/rock community of your town/city.  It’s up to you to choose the tracks, price the drinks, and get everyone happy (well, keep the goths poetic, at least).

Plus Points:

• The graphics will be gravy.  It’s going to be  a number crunching game, or at least a number balancing game.
• Any graphics I do make for it will be heavily stylised and hopefully ‘cute’.  Look forward to cubic metal heads moshing!

Worries:

• Music.  Huh.  I’m going to see if I can get away with being sneaky here, because there’s no way I can create ‘generic goth track number 17′ and ‘generic metal anthem 8′.

Oh, and I discovered that I can’t use the ‘play and charge’ cable to make an XBOX 360 pad work on the PC.  Doh!  I’ll be getting a wired controller some time today – but if it’s a sim game, mouse control seems best anyway!

Hi all,

I got basic SDL stuff up and running now. See screenshot on screen.Also breakfast time. Going well so far.

Claire's workspace and breakfase

Well my goal for tonight is to think of an idea.

Here is my desk:

Messy workspace reporting in.

Pre-LD deskphoto. I expect I’ll quickly fall into a lazy pattern of not cleaning this weekend, so the end-of-weekend photo should be pretty bad. Of course, this is bad by some people’s standards–but hey, it gets the job done. I love my Microsoft Digital Media Pro keyboard, and the Logitech mouse is unbeatable. Also notice the Xbox 360–that’s for downtime, not development.

Kato's Deskphoto

Heres my desk for this one around, not much has changed from LD 14

The computer moved from on top to under, the keyboard was upgraded from “generic clicky” to IBM Model M … um I have a clock and a candle (called “smell my nuts” I kid you not)

Also this time around (if theres enough time)  I am going to try my hand at some music,  now I am not an accomplished musician, altho I took piano as a kid and played many instruments during high school and early 20′s

Now Im 30 and 10 years out of practice, but I bummed this dirt old keyboard from work,  with a excellent sequencer / composer which allows me to baby step so hopefully I can make some basic music that wont make everyone’s ears bleed

Cant wait to get started, and wish everyone good luck

*noobie tip: eat a good dinner, and  take a shower before the compo starts !

• Pygame
• WinXP
• Kids’ bedtime in 43 minutes

This is, um . . . not a dedicated coding room.

Going to have a go at this finally! Above is my upstairs/downstairs work space, but it’s finally not going to rain this weekend, so maybe I can sit out in the sun. My planned arsenal:

* Python + pyglet or libtcodpy

* GIMP, Alchemy, sfxr, lmms, and Audacity

* a marantz pmd620, yamaha p140, and wacom UD

* Louisiana gumbo and hopefully a garden salad at some point.

I’m 80% sure I’m in and will probably use that cool game maker Novashell.. but in any case:

I’ve participated in a lot of LD48s, but I’ve never posted a workspace photo.

I really should learn to make music with that keyboard.  It’s probably time to get rid of the g3 imac as well.

Say hi to my desk, which I hope to see only when I do Photoshop work:

Other than that, coffee shops and the university will probably be where I am most of the time, meeting up with pythong and mathias. Wee!

Tools

• Ruby (1.8, sadly)
• the Gosu library—<plug>just released version 0.7.13!</plug>
• TextMate
• Photoshop + Wacom
• cFXR
• MacBook
• actually
• I’ll make this list
• a bit longer to make it look
• like I am well-prepared

So be very afraid! … *runs to the mall to buy some pizza*

Cleaned and ready to go!

Someone at work pointed this competition out to me, so I figured why not give it a shot.  In my usual manner, preparation has only just begun.  I still don’t even know what development environment I’m going to use.

Following what seems to be tradition, here is my workspace.  complete with cat and emergency supplies (the good stuff is in the fridge!)

Only 7 more hours until my first compo. My home office is always at the ready:

Though I’ll probably spend a lot of time in coffee shops instead, no way am I sitting in one place for two days straight.

The contest starts at 9PM local time, so I may start doing a bit of work tonight if I feel confident that I can force myself to go to bed at a decent hour.

Everybody vote for layers! I’ve got some good ideas there.

Tools: Macbook, Wacom tablet, Ruby, Gosu, cfxr. Possibly chipmunk for physics but I’d rather avoid it to keep things simple. I’m gonna try and avoid 3d too, or keep it to a minimum.

Lots of coffee and green tea. I’ve stashed up on miso soup, dried fruit, and burrito fixings. I’ll try to avoid hitting the homebrew beer but I make no promises.

After having participated in LD5 some years ago I’ve finally found the time and motivation to enter again. Once again, I’ll be using jlnr‘s Gosu gamedev library for Ruby. As my coding skills are a bit rusty at the moment, I hope to regain some programming and time management practice (apart from enjoying a fun contest!)

Here’s my pretty basic workspace:

The compo will start at 5am German time so i think I’ll go to bed early and sleep til 8am. Also hope to resist any persuasions by my friends to go out Saturday night

Will be posting updates here, maybe some on my twitter. Good luck to everyone!

So this is the first LD im doing, and i got some stuff setup. Heres my desk, cleaned up and ready to go

As you might notice theres a book on Lua there, and I intend to use it for this LD together with love. Other possibilities are Java, C# (XNA), C++ with SDL and flash; but I thought Id learn something new, I hope it works out Other tools lying around are a wacom, a calculator, a T-Square, a scanner and earplugs (who knows I’ll be needing those ).

I’m going to timelapse my work with Keeyai’s chronolapse, and i’m going to try and post intermediates on my blog as well as doing small updates on Twitter.

Thats it for now, until later

Progress is going extremely well…

I already have level definitions, rendering code, some game logic, input, etc… Only thing that’s lacking is an actual gameplay idea… or better, a decision on the gameplay decision. My wife’s been helping me with ideas, and I have 3 or 4 possible gameplay paths available, I just don’t know which one is more fun/less work…

Anyway, here’s some photos and such…

At my desk, heavy in thought:

My cat ready to pounce the mouse:

48 hour salad (all done with tomatoes and olives by my wife):

Brain food for lunch: burgers, mediterranean salad, cooked mushrooms, raw carrots… everything the body and mind need:

And the game screeny:

The blocks of any color can be placed in the tower structure, and they’ll fall down until they found another block or get to the ground…

Woken up about 2 hours ago, and saw that the topic is Tower… Basically, it sucks… My wife came up with the basic idea of what I’m going to do: a brick tower building game… the game part is still unclear, but I probably will think of something… I want to try to have most of the game built today, since tomorrow I’m off to Dublin and will loose lots of time in travels and such…

Anyway… Here are the obligatory pics:

My office:

First food of the day:

And the screenshot: