Since I am planning on taking part in the coming LD #32 in April I decided I would get some practice in through the MiniLD #58. With the theme of Pong I originally started my game as a Typing of the Dead / Pong hybrid but as it progressed it became more Dance Dance Revolution / Pong just to keep it simple.

The game itself was fairly straight forward to make but I have learned a lot about what are good ideas and what aren’t when it comes to implementing them in a quick game project. The game is in a playable state but I ran out of time to implement music, high scores and a few other nice to have features.

Mine certainly isn’t the best of the entries but I really enjoyed making it and found having a goal makes it so much easier to be motivated to program. I definitely have enough confidence after this to go in to the coming LD #32 knowing that I can get a game finished in a short space of time.

Tags: #miniLD58, post-mortem, SDL2

This will be my first full compo coming off the back of my first ever miniLD. Really looking forward to seeing what I can produce and joining in the community spirit throughout the weekend

TOOLS

I haven’t fully decided yet but it will most likely be:
Visual Studio 2013
GIMP
SFXR / BFXR
C++ (SDL with OpenGL)

HOPES

I’m looking to have a finished, playable game and to learn at least one new thing through the process

THEME

I really don’t mind.

Good luck all and hope to chat to some of you on IRC through the compo

UPDATE: I’ve got quite far with an engine I’ve been working on for some time and so I may end up using that. As such to comply with the rules, I’m making it publicly available. The documentation is still being produced so a lot of areas may not be covered yet.

Source – https://github.com/Zammalad/ZEGL

So I’d been hyped about entering my first LD for a long time. I had my code base ready and released in the public domain so it could be used and everything was good. The theme stuff came along and there were some good stuff as well as some terrible ones too as expected.

I woke on Saturday morning at 7am GMT, 5 hours after the theme announcement. Seemed a fairly good theme with plenty of scope so I was happy with that. Two hours had passed and I still had no idea on what to do. I pushed on and got some boilerplate stuff down (basic window etc.) but still no idea. I took the obligatory LD shower for inspiration, went for a walk and even played other games for inspiration. Still, no matter what I couldn’t get something to work with. Sure there were the generic ideas that come straight to mind but for me, doing something like a normal platform game and just sticking an odd weapon in seemed like a waste of time. I wanted it to be based on the theme not just a game with the theme smashed in to it.

Anyway, time rolled on and it got to 8pm GMT. With still no idea and time remaining at 36 hours remaining (probably about 28 working hours) I came to a decision to declare myself out. It had become more stressful than fun which goes against everything LD is about.

So I’m sad that my first LD turned out to be a disaster but I live in hope that it’s not just me and that it won’t be the same in August. Hopefully it was just a bad weekend for me and that you can’t always work with a theme since everyone is different.

I look forward to playing as many of the entries as I can though.

This will be my second attempt at Ludum Dare. LD32 was a complete failure where I had severe creativity issues and after 18 hours declared myself out. Hopefully this time round will be different.

As yet I have not decided if I will be using GameMaker: Studio or my own engine – ZEGL

I wish everyone the best of luck and as always enjoy the event.

So this was my first effort at a real Ludum Dare and it has gone better than expected. I don’t feel the game is as good as it could/should have been but the learning experience has been worth it. I will try to keep updating it right until submission hour but I’m running low on free time now.

As it stands now there is no core gameplay mechanic or win/lose functionality. The levels are randomly generated which was something I was still learning coming in to this weekend so I am happy with how that turned out. There is a big lack of music and the sound effects that are in there are horrid (sorry!). I’m a programmer by nature so the artwork leaves a bit to be desired, I can do better but not in a short time frame like Ludum Dare.

I took inspiration from the old Alien Breed games back on the Amiga which can probably been seen in the graphic style.

Dungeon Dweller on Ludum Dare