Ludum Dare 25 Post Mortum

Ludum Dare is over! Actually it has been over for a couple of days, but I'm just now digesting all that happened over the weekend.

For those who want to try it out you can download it from the Ludum Dare page.

It definitely helped this time around that I had other people working with me. I had Taylor actually working with me to make the game, and two other friends were making their own game for the competition in the same meeting room. I recommend that if you are doing your first (or even second) LD that you get some friends together and actually meet up physically to work on you game(s) (even if everyone works on their own). It really helps push you forward and you have a great source of crowd sourcing if you get stuck on some bug or implementation problem.

The other main thing I learned from this experience is how much time I need to allocate in the future when I participate in other competitions. Art takes up a lot of time, so expect to make some beginning sprites early and allocate at least 2 or 3 hours just making that. If you are using a framework that does not give you most of the convenience functions (ex. collisions, sprite management, level creation) make sure you are prepared to take another 3-4 hours setting up those common functions. What I'm going to do about that next time is actually create a framework that has all the features I need and then post it for free on GitHub so everyone can use it (maybe, RL might get in the way). It will probably be in XNA and not Pygame though.

Finally I realized how much time those little things take if you are not prepared for them. If you don't prepare a title screen early, then it may take a lot of work to shoehorn it into your game at the end. Same with win/lose conditions and allowing the player to restart (whether that be restarting the level or the game) without exiting. Next time I will definitely be prioritizing the full game cycle much earlier in the process.

In the end I had a lot of fun, learned a lot, and am excited to participate again in March. Hope to see everyone then.

Ludum Dare 25

So I haven't posted since the last Ludum Dare, so I figured since I'm participating in Ludum Dare 25 it was a good time to get back into posting here.

This time I will not be doing this event alone. I have three friends from work who will be participating. Hopefully this will help with keeping focused, but not too focused on one thing. That was my main downfall in the last competition...spending half a day trying to get the block collision perfect.

Good luck to all those who are participating, and plan on seeing some photos and demos up here once we have something.

Ludum Dare Postmortem

So I have finished Ludum Dare. And while I had hoped to have something more done. I think overall I can call this a success. I will be posting a more detailed rundown later this evening but I thought I would drop my game on here for people to try out. Its a side-scroller with an infinite level and randomly generated terrain.

You can find the demo of what I got done here. (Arrow keys to move, spacebar to jump)

(EDIT) Switched to Dropbox to host the zip file since it looked too complicated to get it downloaded correctly from Google Drive. Also I was too drained last night to write a detailed account so that will be coming later this week.

Ludum Dare 24

I have decided that I am going to participate in Ludum Dare 24 as a way to get myself to learn DirectX in a faster way then just reading the books I got. I doubt I will get anything close to a playable game done but I promise to post whatever comes out of it here. If anyone is interested I have set up a time for doing a Google+ hangout for Saturday and/or Sunday. Find me on Google+ and send me a message if you want to participate. If you're already in my circles you should have already gotten invites.

Also I will try to post updates on the official @makethatgame twitter feed throughout the competition so follow me there if you want to know up-to-the-minute updates. www.twitter.com/makethatgame .

If you are interested in participating in Ludem Dare yourself check it out. There is no pressure, no prizes, just lots and lots of game development stuffed into one weekend.

Finding Inspiration

I just spent a week getting inspiration that will help me make a better game. I was at Gen Con 2012, a gaming convention that is mainly for the table-top gaming crowd. At this gaming convention my wife and I spent most of the time playing board games. These games include newer ones like "Ascencion" and "Lords of Waterdeep".

While I know much of my inspiration will be coming from video games in "Who We Were", events like Gen Con remind me that we can always draw from our experiences away from our computers to bring something new into the video game space. There is a reason that there are so many popular board games turned iPad apps.

I just ordered two books to learn about Direct X and C++. I found out recently that XNA is not going to be a viable platform for Metro-style apps so I have decided to spend some time learning how to play by the rules of the new operating system. Who knows, maybe Who We Were will make its debut on the new Windows 8 App Store.

Oh yeah, and I got a Master Sword

Who We Were Already moving!

Just a short post letting you know I will not get a chance to post interesting information about my game this weekend, mainly because my website provider just deployed a completely new platform and I'm getting the site transferred over. I promise I will provide you with more info about "Who We Were" soon. And also soon you should see a slightly brand-new looking site sometime today.

Edit: If you're seeing this edit then the move has been completed! Let me know what you think of the new look. :-)

"Who We Were" First Look

I've finally decided to get a little more serious about making a new game in my spare time. The first step of that is to show the world what I'm doing. Its definitely in the very very early stages of development but I hope to make this a site where people can talk about early development of their games and give advice/encouragement when you still aren't sure if you'll ever finish it.