BEHOLD THE PLACEHOLDER/PROGRAMMER ART

Much like last time, I’m haphazardly designing as I go, but I’ve got a rough idea of what I want to do with this. Still don’t really have any gameplay implemented either but I’ll manage.

MAYBE even within the time limit!

So it looks like drawing the characters to a surface, then blitting that to the screen on every draw would be the way to go for sprite fonts in GameMaker.

This is the story of what happens when I do just that on my Final Score screen.
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With LD22 – my first Ludum Dare – over and me having caught up on sleep, I’ve had some time to reflect on how it’s gone. Personally I consider this weekend both a success and a failure in different ways.

It’s a success in that I have proven to myself that I can create something at least playable within 48 hours – the reason I signed up in the first place. I’ve also managed to learn a new toolset.

It’s a failure in that the design is pretty crude and the end result isn’t nearly as “finished” as I would have liked it to be. This is due to various issues, some of which popped up very late in the compo.

Nonetheless I’ve submitted the last build, for the sake of honesty. This is what I could manage in the time given with the self-imposed restriction of using new tools rather than familiar ones. I’ll get better. I’m still not sure if it’s in a state I should have submitted it in, but it’s a bit late to change my mind now.

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WOO. 3h30m to go. Things to do:

• Music. LSDJ GO
• More NPC types

Not entirely sure why I seem to be managing, but positively surprised. Pleasantly, even. Progress seemed really slow today because I was mostly faffing around with AI scripting, but over the last couple of hours things suddenly started coming together into a first semblance of playable content :3

lookit all the little mans!

And after a quick shower break, back to work!