This has been a very inspiring Ludum Dare so far. Especially as it’s the first time I’ve taken part!

Looks like my game isn’t going to make it through in the Jam in a playable state, as I’ve got work tomorrow. However, I like the idea (which has been contributed to a lot by my lovely girlfriend) so I’ll try to finish the game during the next week or so.

My game is called Ludum Dare Simulator, or LDS #2.78e^-3 for short, and the idea is that you have to create a game for LD in ten seconds by clicking relevant things around your desktop. The game involves a lot of frantic mouse bashing and should be entertaining for at least 30 seconds. We’ll see, hopefully.

Here’s a couple screenshots from the game thus far. It has working intro, menu and game states, even though the game state is still quite empty and lacks the game mechanics.

Most of my time has sinked into coding basic stuff such as application class, state system, animation and UI systems, and this is my nemesis – it is hard to not create too large and complex systems for a project of this scope. I wrote and maintained a large cross-platform UI library at work during last winter and based on that experience I luckily realized what an endless mess I was heading to today, so I cut it short and decided to go the simple route with this project. So at the moment I have no generic UI code, all the drawing and events are handled in states. That aside, this LD has been a great way to learn to use SFML.

I have also burned many hours at drawing the art. I’ve never really done pixel art before, so it has been quite a learning experience.

I think I’ll head to bed soon, so I wish the best of luck to everyone and thank you for the awesome Ludum Dare! Next time I will be prepared!

Tags: C++, lessons learned, sfml