I just noticed that this is my first post that isn’t a draft (I have about 22 drafts currently), meaning this is the first that anyone has seen. I should probably introduce myself!

Hi, I’m Kaylin Norman, a rather spunky indie designer looking to make a name for himself. When I’m not playing video games I’m designing video games, and when I’m not designing video games, I’m learning how to design video games better. My life pretty much revolves around game design and development. My commitment to it as a career is barely straddling the line of raw passion and obsession.

I have a little thing called Asperger’s Syndrome. Its nothing big really, all it means is that I see and think differently (most of the time). I would have to say that because of my AS I’m here right now, among indie developers, creating small games. Its what got me to this point.

I don’t normally blog due to incidents that happened last time. See, if you were to meet me somewhere say, a coffee shop, you’d be quick to figure out that I’m rather shy and am also generous to the point of stupidity (“did that guy really just give $100 to the salvation army?”). I’m also very keen and love observing things, which I document…through game design!

Among game design and gaming related things I often blog about life through my eyes. Sounds arrogant I know, but bare with me here there’s a reason! My posts about life generally follow a “Cracked.com” style of satire where its almost like a humorous rant (well at least that’s the intention), and because of that people have branded me with all different types of names (that I won’t repeat).

Anywho, Thank you all for letting me join Ludum Dare. I’m sure I’ll learn a lot of things from the friends I make through this community!

The main objective is to avoid the world to be destroyed as long as you can, of course, eventually the world is gonna explode

Here is a small example of what I have in mind:

It is a reaaaaaally simple and basic concept but that is what I think I can do with the time I have. At least I will try to make it fun.

You can play a (very old) game demo I made in Unity here. You can read more about myself and my past projects on my website, I’ve recently been putting up some videos of old work of mine. Looking forward to the weekend!

• Ludum Dare 17 – Floating Islands
• Ludum Dare 18 Jam – Grappling Hookus
• Ludum Dare 19 – Discover the name/way
• Ludum Dare 20 – Codename: Taken

I will be using similar tools and libraries as I used for the others:

• Image edition: Blender, Gimp and Inkscape
• Audio edition: Audacity, Sfxr, Musagi and LMMS
• For coding: Java with Eclipse + libGDX, Artemis and some of our libraries : animation4j, commons-gdx, resourcesmanager, etc (nothing to crazy)

Good luck to everyone

arielsan – Gemserk

This is actually my third Ludum Dare, but so far I have been totally asocial and never even introduced myself, let alone post the games, of which there was only one that was even remotely playable. Don’t ask.

But motivated by the trivial coincidence of this being LD #21 and being 21 years old myself, I have finally braved an intro. I am quite proud of that.

Let’s see if I can make a game too; shouldn’t be too hard. No pressure…

I will be working with the following tools, depending on how far I manage to go of course:

• The ever lovely LÖVE, if making a desktop game. This’ll mean lua.
• The ever…scripty…Processing.js, if making a web game. This’ll make it sort of javascript, sort of Processing.
• Inkscape, GIMP, and Mypaint for graphics.
• Blender for CGI: I won’t be making a 3D game.
• Sfxr (yay) for sound effects, and possibly Neil if daring to make music.
• My snazzy, Compiz-y desktop running Ubuntu Lucid Lynx.
• Certain other non-computational implements.

I will, almost certainly, not be able to make the competition deadlines, so I’ll focus on Jam instead. And I will try to come up with something fitting the winning theme, but if I can’t…I’ll just choose another one I like and roll with it >.>

As for participation: I will silently stalk the IRC, and try to visit the Hangouts if my connection holds. I don’t have enough bandwidth (or courage) to livestream my work, but I will set up gLapse which was thoughtfully made for this very occasion!

Furthermore, I promise not to get too nervous and go into zen-procrastination-mode like I usually do during rushes.

[Also: Did I go overboard with the tags?]

Anyways, I am preparing my workspace and all necessary stuff for my project, here a photo of the first one:

Arielsan - Workspace

Yrevoc Sid–a planet within the Goldilocks zone of its mother star. Circa 2031, humankind turned its telescopes to examine it. Life, it appeared, existed (and perhaps even flourished) on this world. It boasted an atmosphere identical to Earth’s, and water lay across nearly seventy percent of its surface. Scientists began planning missions to investigate this planet, with the ultimate goal of determining just how much life there was. But the third World War interrupted this potential discovery.

All research was diverted to the various war efforts. Invented were vast numbers of missiles, satellites, and firearms. Yrevoc Sid was soon forgotten. It was by lucky chance that the nuclear phase-out program had been completed two months prior to the war’s beginning; humanity could have easily made itself extinct. After the resolution of this three-decade war, a global government was formed. What was once military technology was now pointed to the stars.

Lush, wild planets were quickly found. They were more plentiful than any pre-war scientist had ever dreamed. However, one thing that was never found was sentient life. No planet showed any signs of civilization. Therefore, it entered the common wisdom that humans were the only species to bear this remarkable trait.

After decades of this era of faster-than-light space travel passed, a researcher had a hunch. Back on the now insignificant, war-torn Earth. A man by the name of Robert Case had found the records of Yrevoc Sid. Case observed a discrepancy–recent scans of the planet had revealed very little water, and absolutely no signs of life. He found it odd that a planet should seem so lush before the war, but truly be so barren. Obviously, a research grant would never be issued to persue a trifling misalignment like this, so the researcher set out on his own, unfunded and under the radar.

Robert Case returned to humankind a hero.

So, I decided to take a chance in LD#19. I did one of the previous ones (LD#a-number-to-me-currently-unknown – theme: remake), but kinda failed. I wanted to make a Lode Runner remake, kinda newish tilish and stylish, but for some reason … I got bored by making a remake of it . Anyway – I hope this time the theme will be something very interesting.

It should be a good side project from my every day (and night) project… Because making an mmo is hard (MOAR INFO AT MAH DEV_BLOG)

Yah… What can I write here…

Also – I might be doing some exrepiments here, so ingore them.

Still unsure whether to go for the jam or the real deal, I just hope I’ll have an entertaining weekend polishing some gamemaking skills.

vruz at his surreal corner of the matrix

Pictured on the right, what my work environment will look like this weekend.
The same picture as a panoramic image, the picture is old but the place looks exactly the same as it did last year.

Here’s what things look like in the street today, around in Punta del Este, Uruguay.   There’s a big revamping going on the main street and I can hear a pneumatic drill from here, banging on the street; hope they’re gone for the weekend.  That would certainly make for a better quality creative time

I’m still unsure which tools I will use.  I have a C++/OGRE/OpenGL working environment, a FreePascal/SDL/OpenGL one, but I might just go for Flex/Flixel or Haxe if the project lends itself for it.

Food will mostly be sandwiches, possibly a steakburger, or pasta all of which is stocked in the fridge.
I’m already on IRC and I plan to be around working and hoping for inspiration to come.  If I don’t manage to pull something in 48 hours I will still be there to hang out with some great people, and maybe lending a hand wherever I can.

Cheers!!

What I’m using:

Language/IDE

The platforms I’m going to develop for are Windows, Linux and Mac OS X and if I have too much time on my hands (which I very much doubt) also GP2X.

Libraries
My own framework I’ve used the last couple of times based on SDL, OpenGL, SDL_ttf, SDL_mixer and Vampyre Imaging Library. I will post the basecode probably a few minutes before the compo starts, there are still some bugs I want to fix.

Tools

Food & Drink

Subway sandwiches (Italian BMT ftw! ) and some crackers

And here is a photo of my workspace:

I’m Jonathan Whiting, aka/formerly MrPiglet.  Haven’t done one of these seriously since LD13 (Roads), though I’ve often meant to other commitments kept getting in the way.  Seems I’ve got a properly free weekend coming up though, so I’m in!

Flex is my platform of choice at the moment, and seems rather suitable.  So I’ll be aiming for a Flex + Gimp + other random things approach.  I’m going to use  home rolled base code that has support for blit-style rendering, simple animated sprites, truetype text, and the highly useful as3sfx. It also has little bit of very lightweight generic game/fe framework so I can hit the ground running on Saturday morning.

My work enviroment looks like this:

If you’re getting ‘corner-of-a-bedroom’ vibes from it, that’s because that’s exactly what it is. Not much exciting going on, two screens, well-used notepad acting as a mousemat, ever-present mug of tea, and some highly macho desktop wallpaper. So, basically it looks like I’m pretty much set, roll on Saturday, I’m ready!

Will probably be lurking around on irc (as JonathanW) for most of the duration, and I love to see other people’s creation process, so I’ll try and keep this well updated with what I’m up to and why. I’m actually really rather excited.

So this is going to be my first LudumDare competition. At least I hope so, if nothing goes wrong.

Tools:
- C# and XNA since I don’t really have any C++ framework.
- Visual Studio 2008
- Audacity, Musagi and sfxr for sound
- Paint.Net for “art” (this is gonna be sweet, since my art sucks)

My working area:

<- Sketch of me armed n’ ready for the compo

First time LD’er here, looking forwards to seeing what odd combination of themes combine to inspire us to greatness this time!  I’ve got a long weekend free (it’s a Bank Holiday – woo!) and nothing to get in the way but my own procrastination.  I’m intending to do my entry in XNA/C#, if that’s allowed, using SketchUp with a .X exporter for any 3d graphics I may happen to need.  Of course, never having used XNA or C# in anger before, it should be a hell of a learning experience – hence the title of this post!

In real life I’m a professional Level Designer – which usually means I know a bit of scripting, and a bit of art – but not that much of either!  Wish me luck, as I wish you all the same!

I’ll be using Java, and probably at least one of the below libraries:

• Slick, which in turn relies on LWJGL. Slick is a 2D game library using OpenGL.
• Phys2D, a physics engine for java (port of the same engine as JBox2D).

As for the game, I’m fairly convinced that whatever I make will be simplistic at best. But hey, I’ve heard somewhere that it’s participating that matters Now, I’m curious to see the other entries – good luck folks!

Like half of the people here, this is going to be my first Ludum Dare. </Excited, Pants Wetting Squeal>

Unlike half of the people here, I’m going to be a heretic and not use python. This is partly because I want “I didn’t use python” as an excuse if I fail and partly because I don’t know python.

Thus far “Evolution” is looking likely. A few mad ideas are running around in my skull, trying to establish dominance and a supply of crisps. Hopefully one of them will evolve into something useable and full of awe (but not awful).

Good luck everyone, let the source be with you.

I’m entering this one but I guess it’ll be very experimental because I’m a bit busy this weekend and I want to use pygame (and started learning it a week ago, although I have some game programming experience, mostly using SDL and C).

Anyway I hope I will finish something (and if minimalism won it would help I think =D).

See you on the IRC channel at 4:00 am! (for me ;-D)