Don’t want to be emo but I did terribly in this compo. My worst ever out of 5, even with someone else helping on art? I’m very disappointed.
About demonpants
I was born in '86 and have been a professional engineer in the game industry for a few years now. I've worked on an unpublished XBLA/WiiWare title and 3 published iPhone games (GodFinger, Valet Hustle, dizm SKATE). I currently work at ngmoco and am working on an upcoming game.
Entries
Ludum Dare 24 | Ludum Dare 23 | Ludum Dare 22 | Ludum Dare 21 |
October Challenge 2010 | Ludum Dare 17 |
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Archive for the ‘LD #23’ Category
At least spell it looz if you’re going to do it wrong. 😛
LD has 1400 entries – we’re beyond the time of just Windows
Posted by demonpants
Monday, April 30th, 2012 12:00 pm
I’m getting really tired of only being able to play 1/3 of the games because I have a Mac. Practically every game-making option has some way of being cross-platform, and people should be utilizing that. We now have 1400 people entering games into LD. That means we naturally must have a huge demographic of users in terms of OS and machine capability.
According to w3schools, approximately 5% of users are on Linux, 10% on Mac, and 80% on Windows. Back when LD was starting and we had maybe 100 entries, that meant that just 10 people would have issues playing games that stuck with the “Windows-only” requirement LD has. Not a huge deal. But now, there are 140 people playing on Mac and 70 people on Linux. That’s a whole lot of people being left out in the cold if you decide to go with just Windows versions of your game.
Do you really want to keep over 200 people from playing your game? Me neither. That’s why I think libraries like XNA which force Windows-only should be actively discouraged from Ludum Dare. Yup, that’s a giant opinion. I don’t mean to offend. But unless you can give clear instructions for getting your game to run on mono or wine or anything else, I’d say avoid that.
Even worse than Windows-only games are people who throw their source up expecting others to compile it (Python users, I’m looking at you). That, in my mind, is completely unacceptable. Even if I happen to have Python installed on my machine, do you really expect me to figure out how you need your source run? Nope, I want to double-click something and play. Even better, I want to go to a website and play from there.
I know Objective-C and I really like it. Does that mean I’m going to make a game that’s Mac only? No sir. Because I want people to play my game. Why don’t you?
There are a whole lot of options for making games that are very portable. Here’s just a few of them:
– Java (check out LWJGL, jME, Slick2D, javagaming.org for lots of gamey options)
– Unity (XNA users, you can even code in C#, also great for putting post-compo games on the app store)
– Python (pyGame has a lot of options, can even be compiled into binaries!)
– C++ (my lord there are so many cross-platform libraries here)
РL̦ve
– haXe NME
That list goes on. Go ahead and add more in the comments below, and also you can yell at me for whining all you want.
But really, I think we need some kind of official requirement on this. Windows-only is a relic from when LD was a tiny hobby place. Now that it’s a tour de force in the indie game world, it needs to move on. Let’s change that policy!
(removed GameMaker, as it can’t get on Linux and people don’t think it’s a viable gamedev option)
I’ve done at least 4 48h compos. Maybe 5? This time I wanted to work with my longtime collaborator who is an artist, and another friend who is in school for composition. That naturally means doing the jam. Lo and behold, the jam gets an extra day. I think our game is pretty good, but who am I to waste the time I’m given? Going to spend a couple of hours today making some tweaks, and I think Seth (the artist) will likely add some more art touches. I’ve got work today but what else will I do on the train ride?
Also, 1100+ games: awesome. Sweet work, guys.
Kitty petting break!
This is Zelda the kitten. She wants me to stop doing work and start petting her.
Well okay.
DINNER!
Some delicious protein to get my brain moving. I also took a break to watch seasion 2 episode 1 of Game of Thrones. Pretty awesome! It seems much different than I recall the books being, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.
The game is coming along nicely, but my brainpower is fading. Still, we’ve almost got a first playable prototype so that should leave us a decent amount of time to make levels and add some polish. Basically now we’ve got a guy running around who is able to change forms to get different abilities. There are traps, pushable blocks, cuttable ropes, switches, and doors. Right now I’m adding wandering NPCs that you can kill for some nice negative karma. Sweet!
I took like a 3 hour break to go see my wife perform in a flute recital, it was great. Now that I am back… no shirt.
Had some yummy breakfast courtesy of my awesome wife. I forgot to photo it before, but here it is afterwards. It was 2 eggs over easy with peppercorn and sea salt, sliced avocado, and poppyseed bread toast.
Yum!
It’s 11 PM and I’m getting tired, so I think I’ll wrap up today.
We have: a guy who walks around, collides with obstacles, jumps, and bounces. Circle small planet gravity. A cool game idea. Some fun art assets.
Here is a screenshot with temporary art:
Working title: Hindi’s Dilemma.
Me and my friend Seth are making a game together where you’re a forgotten soul on a small planet. You want to jump between planets in order to get back to enlightenment. To do that, you’ve got to reincarnate yourself in various ways…
Keep watching. 
I’ve always done the solo competition, but this time I have an artist friend who I’d like to work with. As such, I’ll be making a jam entry instead. I really like most of the themes that have been voted to the top, so this could be really fun.
Time to set up a new Unity project, get source control working, etc. etc.