To cut a long story short, for this Ludum Dare I shall be using:<\/p>\n
I’ve entered Ludum Dare a few times and have for the most part used Java and libgdx<\/a>. I’m very\u00a0fond of libgdx, as I’ve seen it grow from a small,\u00a0well-designed Android toolkit into the cross-platform wonder that it is today. The reason that I like it is that it is a toolkit, not a game engine.<\/p>\n “But, Rod, if you like libgdx so much, why are you using Unity this time?” I can hear you asking. Here’s why…<\/p>\n For several years my wife has been patiently pointing out that\u00a0there are a lot\u00a0of Ludum Dare entries that start from a higher position because most\u00a0people would rather make games in 48 hours rather than spending most of that time reinventing the wheel. And I’ve been equally patiently promising\u00a0that one day I would\u00a0develop a toolkit<\/a> based on libgdx and use it for Ludum Dare.<\/p>\n But at some point after #ld28,\u00a0when I was up to my eyeballs with a work project, my wife persuaded me to look for alternatives. This culminated in a strange weekend in which we\u00a0sat down together and\u00a0wrote a Flappy Bird clone using GameMaker Studio.<\/a> We finished it, and it was eminently playable. I couldn’t deny that GameMaker Studio handled most of the boilerplate that I would have otherwise reinvented. In fact, I could definitely see the attraction and in a slightly more sleep-deprived moment considered\u00a0the possibility of writing something similar on top of libgdx.<\/p>\n So, did I decide GameMaker Studio was the greatest thing since sliced bread<\/a>? No, not quite. Even with such a small project, I found myself bumping up against annoyances, asking questions such as,\u00a0“Why did they stop there? Why not expose that in an inspector like Unity<\/a> does?”\u00a0I hadn’t touched Unity for a few years, but I’d heard good things about the 2D in the latest version and decided to give it a try with the same Flappy Bird clone. The results more than surpassed my expectations, not least because I ended up with something that I could play on my phone. Besides, I got to write some C#, which I hadn’t done for\u00a0a while.<\/p>\n And that’s why I will be using Unity.<\/p>\n The generation game<\/h3>\n