I think I will be in this weekend. Still contemplating, as almost none of the themes I liked or was even neutral about made it to the final voting round.

If I participate I will probably use:

Unity
Gimp
SFXR
Famitracker

It really depends, since I just moved and don’t have internet at home yet. ISP technician is scheduled to come in tomorrow, but you never know…

If I can participate I will most likely use:

• GameMaker: Studio, maybe Unity
• GIMP, Aseprite
• SFXR
• Famitracker

Hope to join you guys on Saturday (3am German time yaaaay!). If I finish successfully, It’ll be the fourth game I contribute to LD.

I am still having a big headache and am on fairly strong painkillers, but whatever! I am in again! After the last LD being my most successful entry ever and me still playing my last entry every now and then, I don’t want to miss out on what I can create this time. On the tool-side, I will go with something new, replacing my good old XNA with:

• Game Maker: Studio
• GIMP
• SFXR
• Famitracker

Depending on what I end up making / needing, I might also use the following:

• Aseprite
• Audacity
• AutoTileGen
• Spriter (Which I literally never used so far)

Happy Coding everybody!!!

I honestly wasn’t too motivated, since I hoped to be ready to use Unity around the time this LD comes around, but even without any warmup and the good old XNA 4.0 I got really into it after starting out. This is the first time I made my own music for a LD and even though it’s super basic stuff, I am very happy with the result. In the end, I will probably not make it very high in any of the categories, but I achieved what Ludum Dare is all about: A made a (enjoyable) game in 48 hours and had fun making it.

Try the game here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-28/?action=preview&uid=15165

I am in on the behalf of Scanline Games. Lot of stuff going on because of Christmas coming up, but I will try my best to put out a neat little game over the weekend. I will go for compo and will most likely use XNA again or maybe GameMaker Studio, since my Unity skills are not up to what I hoped for. Graphics most likely with Gimp / Aseprite and sounds with sfxr.

After not finishing last year (but learning a lot), we camp out over at my house this time and Jam along. Me and a friend will create all code and graphics here, while another pal might join over the internet to supply us with some cool music and sounds. We will use:

• Either XNA (Visual Studio) or Game Maker – depending on our game idea
• Gimp, MyPaint, Blender
• SFXR/BFXR
• Maybe some free assets from the net (mostly stuff posted on reddit /r/gamedev) if needed

Our motto this time is pretty much “Keep it simple, get it done!”. After finishing once myself, the last LD was our first time as a team, and unfortunately we ran into some technical difficulties as well as underestimating certain problems. This year we are off to a good start with new confidence and a better idea of what we can achieve within the short weekend.

I am very exited and I’m looking forward jamming with you guys. I’ll definitely drop in the IRC!

Best of luck and have fun everybuddy!!

I am happy to announce that I will team up with a buddy to tackle LD25 Jam-Style!

This will hopefully boost productivity AND creativity, while increasing the graphical quality tenfold (because I draw like a chimp). Give the fact we have to work on Monday we will try finishing up in compo-time.

Our combined weapons of choice are:

Code: C# / Visual Studio / .NET/XNA

Visuals: GIMP / MyPaint / Bamboo Special Edition

Sound: SFXR / BFXR / Audacity

Music: Hopefully another buddy will join, otherwise probably from a free music archive

Now, please excuse me. I have to stock up on energy drinks and junk food!

Have fun everybody!!!

Alright, I am in again. This is my second LD and I loved getting something finished and actually people out there playing it, so I am psyched for this one again. I tried a lot of stuff since the last LD and since Java hates me (like… a lot!) I will use C# / XNA again. I am probably starting from scratch, maybe get an old sprite-sheet animation library fixed up during the week and use it (will be included with the code). I will try to go for compo, but if I can get friends motivated to Jam or if all hell breaks loose on the weekend I might switch over (I’ll make sure to announce).

Tools will be:

Visual Studio Express 2010
XNA GS 4.0 Refresh
Gimp 2.8
Aseprite
sfxr
Hopefully something to make music

Even though I was more looking at the Jam in the beginning, I tried to stick to the compo rules and actually succeeded!

What went right:

-Coding proceeded way faster then expected. I aimed low (threw away the idea of randomly generated universes pretty quickly) and had no unexpected problems. I’m not really good at math, so I expected many problems with orbits and rotations, but everything went smooth.

-Gameplay finished by Saturday night. I got that suggestion from the LD subreddit and tried to crunch in as much as possible on Sat. While some important features (time, wining/losing, score) weren’t finished by then, it left enough room to finish the game up during Sunday.

-Visuals turned out “ok” especially for my non-existing skills as an artist.

-Time was biggest fear in the beginning but even though I was out on Saturday for a couple of  hours, I was able to finish Sunday night by midnight CEST (three hours before the compo ends)

What went wrong: 

-I started out with a different resolution and halfway through I realized that the screen didn’t stretch properly when I ran the game in fullscreen. I upped the resolution to a higher, more common resolution, but so much was hard-coded that I couldn’t change the planet sizes anymore, which made them very small in the final game.

-Collision was a bit tricky, because I forgot that the rectangle around a sprite doesn’t rotate with it, making the collision between the rocket and a planet really wonky. I ended up adding a small 2×2 px hitbox, which orbits around the rectangle’s origin to (almost) match up with the tip of the rocket. Again, this process went much smoother / faster than expected.

Summary:

I aimed low from the beginning, but considering this is the first Ludum Dare and the second game I ever completed, I am very proud of the result. It was also great hanging out with everybody in the IRC and seeing other games develop and everybody being really passionate. It was a great experience that was totally worth a weekend of hard work and little sleep, keeping me excited all the way through. I am looking forward to December!

I am sorry the game only runs in Windows and has to be installed, but XNA 4.0 is the only framework I am really comfortable with. I will try porting to Linux / Mac with MonoGame in the next couple of days, but I am not sure how that will turn out.

I want to thank the makers of Gimp, Aseprite, sfxr and Microsoft (Visual Studio / XNA) for putting out such great tools FOR FREE that allow guys like me to get creative.

You can find the game here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-24/?action=preview&uid=15165

There is also a short gameplay video on YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U47zYXkmyyY&feature=plcp

It’s my first LD so I’ll be just jammin’ along for now.

I am going to use:

XNA / C# in Visual Studio Express for Code

GIMP / ASEPRITE for Graphics

sfxr for Sound

I got some sprite-strip and parallax background animation code lying around which I might re-use to save some time. I also might use Audacity for additional sound and MS Paint for simple drawing.

Bring in the kittens! (Please don’t…)