\u00a0<\/p>\n
The best thing for me about Ludum Dare is competing against myself, and trying to do better than last time; not just in rankings, but also in the quality of my game and in my own personal satisfaction. Looking back at my first three Ludum Dares, there\u2019s a clear progression visible.<\/p>\n
The first<\/a> was JavaScript and canvas2d, primitive geometric graphics and no sound.<\/p>\n The second<\/a> was CoffeeScript and WebGL, still primitive geometric graphics but OMG PARTICLES! and included some awesome sound effects from Bfxr and braindead but catchy music from LMMS.<\/p>\n The third<\/a> was CoffeeScript but back to canvas2d, home-recorded sound effects, music written by a professional 18th-century composer (but butchered by me in LMMS), and animated sprites done in Inkscape.<\/p>\n Each of these has helped me hone my skills in a particular area. This time, I\u2019m raising the bar again. One thing I suck at is level design. Of my three games, only the first had real levels, and they were bad; in the later two, I cowardly sidestepped the issue by dumping increasing numbers of enemies into the same boring rectangular area. So this time, I\u2019m aiming for a game that will force me to practice level design. I\u2019m even reading a book about it!<\/p>\n I\u2019m also going to try my hand at pixel art and pixel animations. In GIMP, if I can\u2019t find anything better that works on Linux. (Any recommendations?)<\/p>\n As preparation, I\u2019ll be looking into how to use\u00a0SoundManager 2<\/a>\u00a0properly, because HTML5 audio still sucks<\/a>.<\/p>\n The community is what makes Ludum Dare awesome, and it\u2019s thanks to you<\/em>. So good luck to you all, and may the code be with you!<\/p>","time":"April 22nd, 2013 1:24 pm","title":"Frozen Fractal to design levels, properly this time","title_was_empty":false}