It took me about five hours to come up with a good idea, but I finally got one after bouncing ideas off my wife.  I messed around with my basecode for a bit, enabling MIDI support (which was broken), sketched a few things on paper and brainstormed gameplay.  I believe I have a working idea that doesn’t appear to be a game with the theme grafted on.  I’m too tired to continue tonight, so I’ll go to bed now and wake up early to start moving forward….

The basecode I am using for the Ludum Dare 48 Hour Game Programming Competition #18 is largely the same as the past two three four five six seven competitions. I haven’t made any changes to it since the last compo. It’s Java based and initially came from the Killer Game Programming in Java book that I bought a few years ago. Since then, I’ve added a bit to it that I found I was redoing over and over again.

Download it here.

Goals this time around:

• Hand-drawn art style. I sketch things out on paper and scan them in to colorize. Bold colors and gradients.
• KISS – Keep It Simple, Stupid! I’ve had my best luck when I keep my game simple and try not add too much complexity.
• Make useful additions to the basecode that can be used in later competitions. The screenshot stuff is an example of something I did previously that helps out a lot.
• Finish most of the work by Saturday night so I can spend Sunday polishing.
• Don’t run into dumb problems that eat up eight hours.

Tools in use:

• Java 6 SDK (though last time I included a version for JDK 5)
• Eclipse IDE
• Photoshop, maybe some Illustrator
• DrPetter’s sfxr for sound effects
• Audacity on my Mac, plus Rockband USB microphone
• HP OfficeJet 6450 All-In-One for scanning doodles
• Everlasting Gobstoppers
• mIRC for chattery
• Killer Game Programming in Java and the base code I mentioned above.

Looking forward to the compo!