I will be participating in my first Ludum Dare competition. From the FAQ:
The last time I participated in something like this was June 2005’s Game in a Day, which didn’t go as well as I expected, but I was warned properly. Still, it was fun, and I learned a lot.
The theme for LD #11 won’t be announced until later tonight, when the contest begins. Then I’ll have 48 hours to come up with a design and make a game. There are a few guides out there, such as sol_HSA‘s and MrFun‘s. Generally, to prepare for a grueling 48 hour contest, I need sleep, food, and prepared tools.
The latter is where I think I might falter. In the past few months, I’ve learned that continuing to use the Kyra Sprite Library is more of a detriment than a help. I would rather not use it for newer projects, and if I am not going to use it, I can use libSDL directly. Kyra provided a lot of functionality, such as loading sprites with named animations, dirty rectangle updates, and collision detection. I intend to go without it, especially since I would like the game to be ported to Windows much more easily, and Kyra is giving me enough headaches trying to port it to older Linux-based distros. Since I am not using Kyra, I am worried that I will spend more time trying to implement technical details than making a game. Game in a Day kind of went like that for me, and so I think this time I shouldn’t worry about a complex design. And I should make sure that any simple designs are actually, truly simple.
Other preparations for this weekend include buying kitty litter, cleaning my apartment, and buying groceries.
Keep an eye on my LD blog posts. I will try to cross-post.
Good luck to all of the LD #11 participants!
[tags] game development, video games, competition, contest, ludum dare, tools [/tags]