A friend of mine has come in from out of town for the night, so a few of us went to one of our favorite college spots: Allende Restaurant, or what I like to affectionately call Club Allende. They have the best burritos in Chicago!

I ordered a vegetarian burrito and horchata (rice water).

That burrito is going DOWN!

It seems that most of my pictures this competition are of the food I’ve been eating, so here’s picture of my “work environment”:

What you don’t see on the blanket to the left in the picture is my cat Diego. Gizmo was on the chair on the right. They wait until I write a line of code, and then they pounce. I should move this effort into my office for some privacy.

Speaking of code, I have about 13 hours left in the compo and almost no code. This is going to be either a lot of fun or a lot of pain. And I know I’m having lunch with my parents today, so that’s even less time. Wish me luck!

And here is how my workplace looks like. I’m actually at the office because my gf would kill me for coding whole night :). The monitor on the left isn’t actually taking part in the fun - it’s used only to run the Wii devkit, but I fired it up for more ePenis points

Here’s where I’m working most of the weekend. I’d like to clean it up a bit, but there’s no time for that this weekend =). I’ve got an second monitor I could use with xinerama, but that make the timelapse impossible to follow, so I won’t be. On the left is my afternoon snack, tortilla shell things with sliced chicken and Emmental on top. There’s also a bunch of Sambal Oelek under the chicken, just to make it a little bit more interesting XD.

On my own two feet here. Disregard the Eee, it’s just there to match all the other deskphotos. I’m not going to use it… The little black box beneath the keyboard is my high-tech entropy supervisor, which monitors heat flux in the immediate vicinity of particular computational elements. Calling it a common household thermometer would be a blatant lie!

Yus! Taxes complete. Like any good citizen.

So, same idea for tomorrow. I tried setting up a Netbook a couple weeks ago to use as a mobile dev machine. The plan was to try it out during the compo. Perhaps, sit outside and enjoy the weather, while coding a game. And if it works, take it with me to Toronto and ToJam next month.

Here’s a pic.

Yes, I’m silly and put a Mac sticker on it. It actually runs Windows. Normally I wouldn’t deface a computer like that, but somehow defacing a Netbook seems alright.

Claustrophobia sounds like a good name for the game.

Until tomorrow.

Journal:

05:40

Waking up after about 5 hours of sleep. I’m feeling peachy. Can’t wait to go o__O at the theme and lose a few hours wondering why the hell I did even bother going up at such an ungodly hour. LD, you gotta love it. Also, breakfast.

Go go go LDers!

Notice how I skillfully include both a desk photo and a food photo at the same time! And notice the tinyness of my EeePC 901 under Ubuntu. And the mouse. The touch-thingy just drives me mad.

‘nough said.

Not much, but I’m loaded with mountain dew and snacks for a while. I migrated to the couch a few months ago after I got sick of sitting on my hard chair at the counter. (See previous deskphotos.)

Hmm, I have a bunch of random junk around.

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

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v476/julianmh/ld14workspace.jpg

Filled with crap, it’s my desk. The CDs by my Laptop are, from lrft to right, Guns N’ Roses: Use Your Illusion II, Pennywise: About Time, and Pennywise: Full Circle. The Pennywise are there because I’m seeing The Offspring in Toronto with Pennywise opening.

Hrm… wonder where it is you’ll go.

Well I got started a bit late.  Started thinking about the theme when it was announced last night… pondered for a few hours and then went to bed.  Got up at about 10:30 and started, with a few cups of coffee and a few Diet Cokes.  Pre-work Desk-Shot:

Yeah I typically sit on the floor.  I dunno.  If you squint you might get a hint about what road you’re on in my game.  Anyway — something more fun to look at:  In progress screenshot!

I should mention first that today is my 24th birthday !

I am starting a bit late.  I had a problem with my computer and had to format.

This time I am using the Ogre3D engine.  Language will be C++.  My game idea to start with will be a frogger style game, except your a human.  It will be 3D.  All art assets will be made from scratch using gimp and blender.

I do already have a stripped down framework to run the Ogre engine.  Its maybe 500 lines of code to just startup the core Ogre system and run a game loop.

I also recently got a new desk.  I thought it might of been too big, but apparently I already managed to use all of it.

Food for today consists of apple pie, orange and birthday cake.

Hello again everyone, I am officially checking in for LD13. I have participated in one LD before, LD 11: Minimalist and came up with a very simple text adventure. I had a big goal to overcome last time as I did not know how to code when I started the competition and I did not start learning until about 1/3 of the way through the competition. I ended up choosing Python for LD11 and I will stick with that but will be using PyGame this time. I am now familiar with the base python language but have had little experience with PyGame so this will be another learning LD for me. I am really hoping I do not cut my entry so close to the deadline this time as I had some trouble getting my game hosted and almost missed the deadline.

My goals for this LD:

-To learn how to use PyGame and use what current knowledge I hold to be more organized with my process this time.

-Create something with some decent graphics, nothing over the top but I would really like to go a different direction than the text game last time.

-Test my project more thoroughly this time around as my last entry was quite buggy.

-If I have time I would like to add a story screen with changing pictures as an intro and add some sound effects or music.

I had a brain storming session tonight and came up with a really strong idea that plays with a different take on the theme, I came up with many ideas but this one really stood out for simplicity and fun being strong points but also seeming very versatile in that later down the line I could refine the idea and keep building on it. I have already got 90% of it mapped out and I think I will be ready to start coding when I wake up tomorrow.

This is going to be a big undertaking for me, but I am ready to give it my all and really work hard. I hope you all have a great night and good luck with your ideas. I am really looking forward to seeing everyones games and catching up on the journals. Catch you all on IRC!

Progress:

Design: 90%

Code: 0%

Art/Music: 0%

Testing: 0%

Sleep/Eat: 0%

edit* I threw together a quick reference picture for my play screen. I was hoping not to give away much with it as I want to work out the details before providing a full explanation of the game mechanics.

edit2* Just wanted to throw up a before deskphoto before heading to bed.

I’m having media upload problems with wordpress (my computers fault). I’m in the middle of formatting. Well, I was going to format Thursday, but that got pushed back. So following the compo I’ll be back in computer fixing mode.

EDIT: Image Uploading Fixed

Bit of a mess, and from yesterday, but there we are.

LDT +2145

Local time: 14:44

We had a late brunch. First we had french toast:

Then since we were still hungry we had eggs and bacon and squeezed some fresh orange juice:

And finally here’s a deskphoto:

Anyways, my entry is pretty much finished, just polishing it now.

My workstation, including my crazy chair, the Swopper.

Champaign grapes from Trader Joe’s.

Couldn’t take the pic quickly enough!

Peanut butter jelly time!

Big, gravity-defying water mug:

I made breakfast (scrambled eggs with spinach and cheese) for my wife and myself:

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:

Well yesterday I was all “welp, I don’t want to make one for Evolution”

So all night I was trying to work out an idea for it - and came up with something awesome!

Then I wake up and find out it’s tower? RAWRG

Oh well, I’m doing something anyway - here is desk.

Nomming cornflakes - BORING BREAKFAST IS BORING

I just woke up and saw that the theme is “The Tower”. No idea what to make yet, but I’ll start with some breakfast: croissants and coffee.

Waiting for the magic to begin . . . .

Two hours past, no ideas, and no still inspiration from Tigger. Time for a bike ride to the corner store for some mind fuel.

I have a pretty minimal desk setup (I’m not at my usual coding spot). Also, hooray for late night coding food.

I have most of an idea worked out, but I think my programmer art will ruin it. We’ll see how it goes.

This is where I’m going to be working. Somewhat cluttered with random stuff.

Yes those are biscuit packets down the far end (fear not, I have more elsewhere), and a Sophie Ellis-Bextor cd (essential listening >.>) half obscured by my cheerful cat. Oh, and a huge plate of pasta for thought fuel.

Now for digestion, and consideration of “the tower”. Not my favourite theme.

seconds before starting ld12, my desk

Here’s where I’ll spend most of my LD48_12