Hey there guys,
I pretty much liked the PoV’S post about software being free for Ludum Dare. However, what about software that is always free?

I encourage everyone to add their favorites in the comments

Don’t forget to read the Rules and check out this page too!

Graphics

PhotoFiltre 6 – Take it as a worthy paint upgrade. This editing software got your basic tools plus some nice features if you don’t own a PhotoShop license or have no patience to go through GIMP.
PhotoFiltre 7 – Adds layer support.
GIMP – Saw that coming? Pretty much a free PS equivalent.
Paint.NET -It’s Paint but .NET and that means better.
Inkscape – Vector graphics editor.
Blender – Ludum Dare isn’t all about 2D art so get this 3D editor to work.

Sound

as3sfxr – Generator for sound effects. Link to online version. sfxr is Ludum Dare old school stuff
MilkyTracker – Solid tracker software to write your 8 bit inspired songs. Supports at least .wav export.
GoatTracker 2 – Another good but hard to learn tracker software.
SunVox – A modern tracker i’d say. Gives you pretty output for dirty input.
Audacity – Your favorite free audio editing software.
Linux MultiMedia Studio (LMMS) – Fruityloops alternative for your Linux. (by dertom)

Level Editor

DAME Editor – Though it’s intended for flash games you can use this 2D level editor for pretty much every programming language as long as you are able to use two for-loops.
QuArK – QuArK is a map editor for games of the Quake Engine. You may ask why the hell Quake? Because most open source engines do support the map format of the Quake Engine or there is at least a plugin for it. It’s just famous and old school and awesome.

Engines

Irrlicht Engine – 3D engine running with C++.
OGRE – Ogre 3D engine supports C++, Python, .NET and Java. It is so open source!
Flixel – For the flash addicts.
FlashPunk – For the flash addicts.
jMonkeEngine 3.0 – Some Java 3D stuff.
RPG JS – For those familiar with the RPG Maker this one is a HTML5 version.
OpenGL – Choose your favorite language and go!
Allegro – “Cross-platform, open source, game programming library” for C and C++ (by Folis)
Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL) – “Cross-platform multimedia library” written in C but can also be used with several other languages. (by Folis)
SFML – Yet another multimedia library for those C++ geeks (by Folis)

Code Editor

Notepad++ – This text editor supports most programming languages and their syntax. Pretty good for a beginner that is confused by IDE’s.
Eclipse – Java/C++ IDE.
FlashDevelop – Flash/ActionScript IDE.
Codeblocks – C++ IDE.
MonoDevelop – C#, ASP.NET, etc. IDE.
VisualStudio – You could also use free Microsoft software< if you got a Windows computer.

Resources

Check the rules whether you are allowed to use the stuff from below!
48h Compo:

• “Photos and recordings you make of people or things are acceptable content, just you must acquire them during the competition.”
• “Fonts, drum loops, drum samples, and sampled instruments are allowed IF you have the legal right to use them.”

C64 font collection – For your retro dialogs.
Freesound.org – Remember to put everyone in your credits.
mayang.com/textures/ – Free (placeholder) textures. Give credit! Limit: 20 per day.
cgtextures.com – Free (placeholder) textures. Give credit! Limit: 5 per day (as far as i remember).
spriters-resource.com – Free (placeholder) sprites. Yet again: give credit!
staticvoidgames.com – Place to upload your game to or learn a few things. (by KevinWorkman)

Enjoyment

Lasf.FM – How could you possibly not know this website? Free music dude!
9GAG – No time to keep up with 4chan or reddit?
z0r – 0M61 It’s so random

10 Hour Torture

Epic Sax Guy
Nyan Cat
Amazing Horse
Dwarf Hole (Diggy Diggy Hole)
What is love? (feat. Jim Carrey)
I’m a banana

I made this fairly simple game to familiarize myself with the new environment I’m using. It is a more constructive interpretation of classic Breakout: instead of destroying blocks, you create them. See how many blocks you can make before losing your ball or getting it stuck.
But there’s an alternative way of playing this: try to get the ball stuck deliberately, using as few blocks as possible.

It’s not doodle-based in any way, bit I’m submiting anyways. Maybe, on a more abstract level, you could consider the game itself a doodle… ah, nevermind.

Controls: mouse or arrow keys. Space or mousebutton resets.

Play it in your browser (source included)

I spent the day “working” on my warm-up MiniLD32.  I have the general design done, it’s a sort of gopher smash on the head game, except you are on a float throwing beads and doubloons at people in the crowd instead on hitting them on the head.  I was going to use Orthello2D with Unity but after some hair pulling figure out it hasn’t been update to 3.5.  Then, I started figuring out how 2D Toolkit worked, but it dawned on me an hour or so in that I couldn’t use that in a Ludum Dare because I can’t share all the code.  So, then I started floundering around trying to get some basic things working a la from scratch.  After Google-ing some problem I ended up watching 3 hours of YouTube Unity tutorials.  So, a most successful warm-up so far, as long as you think of warm-ups as making all the mistakes you can’t afford to during the actual Ludum Dare.  I’m headed to bed now, but I could still have something playable by the end of the day tomorrow, stress on the could.

I missed the nano practice round, so I’m doing my own warmup. I’ve chosen the theme Mardi Gras because it’s Mardi Gras weekend (Mardi Gras is Tuesday, Feb 21st this year.)

Theme: Mardi Gras

No hard rules, timeframes, start or end times, or judging, just fun. Post what you make in the comments.

Spent the last couple of days (off and on, due to injury) working on this!

Player flies a hover ship (green) over a wrapping procedural landscape and has to battle enemy drones (red), haven’t thought of a name for it yet! (ehm!)

All guesses on a postcard and the winner gets Kudos or an old age pension ;o)!

..Now if I build a flying Giant Monster Angry Cyber Kitten model, hmmm!

PS I’m in!

Here it is:

Kittenswarm

It’s quite interesting how the swarm algorithm behaves. It’s totally deterministic about the kittens’ movement. But the starting positions and movement are random which gives fully unpredictable results for swarm behaviour.

This could probably become a full game with nicer graphics, sound and more levels. So far it was a great warmup for the next weekend.

Grab that fish!

So this weekend i have mostly been playing lava survival. But i need some practice for the upcoming ludum dare.

Because i have never coded sound before. So i am thinking of a simple game that is like whack-a-mole.

Just to get started.

Also.. I’m in. I will be using Java w eclipse. And paint.net for graphics.

I am also livestreaming this as livestream.com/petterroea

Here comes a first screenshot:

The kittens are able to follow the mouse while maintaining to keep the swarm and stop at the screen border. Probably I’ll implement a test level with some deadly areas and a goal to reach.

3-year-old daughter off to bed – the evening is mine, all mine!

My warm-up is going to be to finish my sorely neglected xmas challenge game. So far I’ve done a lot of tweaking the landscape generation code, but no gameplay at all. Older readers may find this looks suspiciously familiar, if a bit murky…

This weekend’s task is to get the gameplay mechanics and main game loop working. I might have time to improve the landscape and presentation a bit, if things go well. It certainly needs it…

Well this is my first LD, so I intended to do a prep weekend. I’ve never tried to code a game before (from start to finish). Though I program every day at work, it is mostly data analysis and portal websites. What I didn’t know was that LD warm up is something of a tradition and a damn good idea. It even comes replete with a random theme assigner.

So, I got Narration.
Game Ideas

Employing KISS principles, I think that I’ll do a simple puzzle game based off a the idea of enacting a story.

• Player is a ball which can push other objects round a maze
• There are various coloured exits to a level
• When the level starts the ‘Narrator’ will say something like “Then our hero pushed the red block through the blue exit’
• Level is complete when the red block goes out the blue exit

That should cause me to use the basic tools and skills I’ll need for next week end.

O Ludum Dare, how dare you?

Initially I wanted to make some progress on my TIGSource compo game for December. But this warmup seems like a great idea as I have some swarm-algorithm code ready for some weeks now I wanted to put in a game. And guess what the generator for theme picked for me:

Kittens!

So I’ll try to make a game with a kitten swarm for warmup this weekend.

Quick warmup sketch made in Cherrybrush:

Radio tuned to the Secret Sound Service. Take care, everyone! Here’s wishing a fruitful and productive LD48.

Edit: a nearly-pointless “song” made in Musagi a few days ago: Jungle Exploration Theme (ca. 1996)

Also, I may or may not be twittering about the process.

managed to do a 24h warmup game with the javascript library i’m gonna use.

didn’t turn out too bad.. i say: when it displays a score, its a game

works only in firefox3.5+ and safari4, though. and takes a while to load i hope that won’t kill my game in the competit.

http://gamejs.nekapuzer.at/tyround/

oh and hi, all! it’s my first time.

I’ve been trying to familiarize myself with Flixel in preparation for the Big Compo next weekend. Really psyched about it!

I wanted to focus on atmosphere, and this included music. Hopefully, I won’t be scrambling to figure out how to do basic things this time around (as opposed to last time). The goal is to spend time on content, playability, and completion, instead of “getting a game working”.

Along with Flixel, I will probably be using my HSB color utility class (adapted from somewhere on the internet).

You can play my warm-up game-like thing, “Distant Chimneys”, on my blog:

blog.megastructure.org/2010/04/distant-chimneys/

Cloud Game warmup mostly done.   You shoot the clouds.   I didn’t really have an idea, I just started coding..

I was going to do something where you were the God of REAL Twilight fans, and you had to make clouds to shield your followers from the sunlight…. But it seemed a but too involved.

play it here…

Since there is some confusion.. this is an actual flash game I coded as a warm up in the 2 hours leading up to LD14 theme announcement.  It isn’t just a screenshot..    When the game loads, click in the screen and use your keyboard to win!

As though this weekend weren’t going to be masochistic enough, I whipped out a hour-and-a-half warmup Towlr. Download Towld, written in python+pygame+chipmunk.

Sources tomorrow.

towlrdf(screen);

Now includes source.

just to let anyone who feels like warming up for the main compo with a little towlr action and who wasn’t hanging in IRC.. there is a little towlr precompo going on… you’ve been warned. 

and for those of you who have been spared from towlr so far… here is the link: http://www.towlr.com

Hi all, looking forward to my first ever attempt at Ludum Dare, should be a learning experience at the very least

In the interest of upfrontness, and because it seems to be the done thing, have a link to the *extremely* primative base that I plan to use mrpiglet_base.zip.  It does very little, just provides a bit of a wrapper around some SDL + SDL_Mixer and OpenGL functionality.  Can’t imagine it’ll be of any use to anyone, but use/abuse as you wish anyhow.

Now I think it’s time to try and sleep off the Friday beers, see you all tomorrow for the event itself.  Cheers!