Wow, this was already my fifth LudumDare (The first one was on a different account). And again, I had a blast! Its just such a cool feeling to know, that there are thousands of people out there making games at the same time. And you can try them all afterwards! Might not be a good idea for your health though

I tried out some new tools this time. The past LudumDares, I always went for C++ and OpenGL, because that’s what I know the best. During the last few months however, I played around with JavaScript and WebGL a bit more and thought it might be a good idea to try it out during a LudumDare. Turns out, it was!

Coming from C++, I still don’t really like JavaScript. I ran into some stupid bugs, that would never have passed the compiler in C++ because of its stronger types and generally stricter rules. But I got the job done. And I honestly am impressed, every time I work with JavaScript, of how fast it can be!

The feedback I got so far is awesome! Lots of nice words and very helpful feedback. Honestly, I think that’s the part I like the most about LudumDare: The feedback after the competition.

So, I will keep on rating games (I am currently at the 30 games mark). Lets see if I get to 100

And last but not least: If you would like to play my game and leave me a comment here, I would be very happy!

Yes! My game is playable and submitted The only thing missing is some kind of splash screen to explain the controls.

The theme was kind of hard for me. I was hoping for Companion. In the end, I interpreted the unconventional weapon as an unconventional fighting mechanic.

Here is my entry.

Here we go again. This will be my first LudumDare without my trusty C++/OpenGL combo. Instead, this time around I will be using JavaScript and WebGL.

Last Weekend I prepared some base code and got a rotatable box working here (Yea!)

My code is already on github and will be updated during the compo.

May we all have a lot of fun this weekend!

I managed to throw a Windows port of Dwarven Kingdoms together (Thanks Jenny). I hope it works for most of you.

Please try it out: Dwarven Kingdoms

Even though the theme is really good in my opinion, I had a hard time integrating it in my game ideas. I wanted to make a turn based strategy game, as I didn’t manage to make one during my last ludum dare (LD27). So I kind of forced it in there…

The Idea: You are a king. You are in war with other kingdoms. To finance their troops, all kingdoms try to control as many gold mines as possible (Yea… mines… thats the theme… :-/ ). The goal is to eliminate all other kingdoms.

The basic game mechanics for turns and movements are in place. But my todo list is still very long. I hope I’m able to finish a somewhat playable game.

Edit: Oh, and here is my repository: https://github.com/knied/LD29

Current status. All the shapes are generated in code :)

LD27 was my first time participating in the 48 hour compo. A few years ago I was part of team and we participated in the jam. Back then, we where not really able to finish our game. But still, we had a lot of fun. This weekend, finally, I had time to participate in another ludum dare.

I managed to create a game, that I am really proud of. The only thing I am not that proud of is the name: “Seconds of Light”. This kind of was a last minute decision.

Hm, screenshots dont really show how the game feels…

The Good

First off, the theme “10 Seconds” is great. From the list of the fifth voting round, this was the only one I really wanted to make a game for. I already played more than 50 other games and I have seen A LOT of really creative and unique ideas on this theme.

Some weeks before this ludum dare, a friend and I made a game for a university course on network programming. I had created a very limited, but easy to use C++ framework for this game, based on Qt and OpenGL. I used the week before the compo to pick some classes out of this game and added a simple entity component system. This turned out to be a very good foundation for this compo. I had no technical problems what so ever. The only problem was, that the windows version had problems with the OpenGL version I used for the mac version. So I had to rewrite the renderer in OpenGL 1.x during the compo.

Although at first I had the idea to make a turn based RPG and threw away this idea half a day into the compo, my time management turned out to be perfect. Almost no crunch time at the end. A few more features would have been great, but that is just a bonus.

The Bad

Not much. The only thing that bugged me at the end was my more and more messy code. This was manly caused by very simple things like handling the state of an object or by adding a timer for delayed actions. The result was an if-else-hell. Next time, I have to prepare some classes to handle these simple things.

Now I want to play as many games as possible. So much inspiration everywhere!

Also, if you want to try my game:

-> PLAY IT HERE <-

I am very happy with what I managed to create in the last two days. No major features had to be cut. I even managed to throw in some sounds. Here is a screenshot of the final result:

And here is my entry.

So when will LD28 start…?

Its getting late here, so I will get some sleep now. But first: A status report.

At first, I wanted to make a turn based RPG like game, where each turn is 10 seconds long. Actions would take up different amounts of time. But it turns out, its quite difficult to make a turn based game fun and at the same time simple.

So, back to the drawing board. I came up with a new idea that I personally like even more.

You play an unarmed character trapped in a dark dungeon. All around you in the shadows are monsters trying to eat you. Only the light of some rare to find torches helps you to hold them back. Guess how long one torch lasts… Your goal is to find out of the dungeon.

This is how it looks like at the moment:

Hey everyone!

Finally, a ludum dare and no exams to write. I will definitely try to make a game. My tools will be:

• C++
• Xcode on Mac OS X and Qt Creator on Windows
• Gimp

I have no clue on what to use for sound yet. Probably one of those fancy sound generators.

I spent the last week preparing a code base, based on Qt and OpenGL. Just today, I added a fallback renderer using Qt´s own drawing functions. The past taught me not to try to use OpenGL on Windows A lot of the code base comes from a game a friend and I did for a university project recently which can be found here and looked like this:

As you can see, its very limited when it comes to graphics. But I like that and my LD entry will probably look similar

So, here is the repository for my entry: Link

Good luck! I will see you on the other side.