Greetings, fellow jammers!
I've been reading posts made by some of you, such as @ddrkirbyisq, @radical-dog, @jesterseraph, @samusoidal and many others.
Everyone was talking about their past experiences, how they're going to deal with LD42, what softwares they want to use -and a very beautiful post wrote by @hagge, "Dont make this hard", you should read it-.
Then I realized that I HAVEN'T done such a thing when I introduced myself. That's kinda bad, don't you think so? Well, it's time I expose myself.
I won't talk about what tools I'll use in LD42, but rather about HOW I am approaching Ludum Dare
Why I chose the "Jam"
I chose to join the "Jam" to have more advantages than disadvantages.
1. 72 is more than 48
Having 72 hours allows me to better organize my time. 48 hours surely are a challenge, but that's too much of a challenge for me.
2. Improving myself
I'm not that good of a music composer although I play the piano, nor a graphic designer. The Jam allows me to use others' works in my game. All I have to do is FIND them. (Just doing that to save/protect your ears from a disastrous cacophony.
I'm sure I will learn how to compose music and design characters. I just need TIME. Someday I will compose my own musics and design my own graphics for my own games.
3. Theme (It always sucks)
Let's admit it. The proposed themes aren't always good. Watching @philstrahl -a.k.a. Pixel Prophecy's- videos and thinking about "How should I make it" was a painful mental experience. No matter what I tried, I had no ideas. That's until LD38 begun. "Headroom", that's when I started having ideas. I just hope that LD42 theme is at least as inspiring as LD38 and LD39 ones.
It's pretty amusing to stick to the winning theme, and it makes a great challenge!
The process
Since Ludum Dare is a "Game Jam", I thought that everyone should read, edit, study and download my project. For this reason I chose to make my LD projects public. I will create a repository in Github for each LD game I'll create. Moreover I'll use Google Docs and some other tools to make you all more involved in my experiences.
I'm planning to use a Wordpress -or any other CMS, give me your advice- blog to describe my "working" days and to post a Post-Mortem of my games, reviews of your ones and eventually a personal list of the favourite ones I played before the next Ludum Dare.
I'll surely use the old-but-functional "Pen and Paper" Combo with my "Writing and Sketching" no Jutsu. That always works!
By the way, do you know I'm on Twitter? Try guessing my username! It's easier than you think.
I think that's enough for now. Let's take this post a step forward. Let's make it more interactive. I want to know how YOU are going to develop the game. Which softwares do you use? Which Game Engine have you chose? How do you "pitch" the game and how to you plan the game development?