Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[MorleyDev]

Sorry to double post and bump, but anybody else doing ludum dare this weekend?

[Elu]

Ludum dare always amazed me, but i never managed to do anything.
I know a little code-fu, but the game-making is still a mystery, expecially the graphic side... so Morley(or anyone else), how do you start? can you point me to some beginner resource?

[dreadmullet]

Download Unity and Google Sketchup and you can make a game in 48 hours if you're dedicated enough. That's quite a large statement, but those two programs are excellent places to start. Once you're comfortable with 3D modelling I recommend the switch to Blender, unless you want to make 2D games. Either way image editing software (like Paint.net or the GIMP) is a must.

[MorleyDev]

Streaming now: http://youtu.be/KapZQOn-XXk

It's not too late for others to get started ^^ The theme is Evolution.

[dreadmullet]

Streaming now: http://youtu.be/KapZQOn-XXk

It's not too late for others to get started ^^ The theme is Evolution.

Cool. The code is quite blurry, could you stream at a higher resolution? Also, stop eating, it sounds gross.


I haven't tried a Ludum Dare yet. I suck at getting things done, and I always have too much ambition. And I'm a bit of a perfectionist. I'll try it someday.

[MorleyDev]

Cool. The code is quite blurry, could you stream at a higher resolution? Also, stop eating, it sounds gross.

Sorry UK internet xD At most we get like 300kbps upload. As for the eating, again: Sorry xD I was trying to get as far from the mike as possible but it's a bloody studio mike and apparently the other side of the room isn't far enough sometimes >.< Switched over to studio mix and playing royalty free music until this pizza is devoured

[alway]

Cool. The code is quite blurry, could you stream at a higher resolution? Also, stop eating, it sounds gross.

Sorry UK internet xD At most we get like 300kbps upload. As for the eating, again: Sorry xD I was trying to get as far from the mike as possible but it's a bloody studio mike and apparently the other side of the room isn't far enough sometimes >.< Switched over to studio mix and playing royalty free music until this pizza is devoured

No. Show your viewers who is boss; make a mix track of you eating and play it on loop for the next 48 hours.

[MorleyDev]

No. Show your viewers who is boss; make a mix track of you eating and play it on loop for the next 48 hours.

Don't tempt me

I actually had quite an existential crisis not long ago when I just sat there staring at a loss at the code. Now the caffeine has kicked in and I'm past it

[Mego]

No. Show your viewers who is boss; make a mix track of you eating and play it on loop for the next 48 hours.

Don't tempt me

I actually had quite an existential crisis not long ago when I just sat there staring at a loss at the code. Now the caffeine has kicked in and I'm past it

Huzzah! Also, your balls are bigger than mine. I also have the excuse of moving into a college dorm this weekend.

Next year, perhaps!

[MorleyDev]

On Ludum Dare:

No way I'm getting this done in time. Spent too long on the background under-the-hood code. Possibly because that's the part of coding I personally always have the most fun. Probably why I'm on the Platform team at work, we make the system and make it work. Let the Application team worry about the best shade of Cornflower Blue

On the brightside my system is very modular, and I am definitely going to create something properly using a more refined variation on this design at a later date (and the lack of time limit will let me use proper TDD and the like). I'd try and push for the Jam but tomorrow I have plans unfortunately.

If I take part in the next LD, I've learnt a lot here and had fun, even if I have nothing to demo by the end of it but a sprite moving around the screen (but it is a reasonably well coded sprite, with an Entity-Component system and Endpoint -> Service -> Data architecture rolled out entirely in these two days). I learnt from my mistakes and will hopefully have more to show in the future.

Major respect for the other LDers who actually get something done without getting lost in background implementation details, as I did.

If I could do it again, I'd pick a pre-existing "engine" (hate that term) instead of writing my own. I just can't write fast and hackish code without feeling unclean, but for rolling things yourself I'm not experienced enough to do anything but in the timeframe. I fought against that, and it took me too long.

Also I'd impose a much stricter "sprint" system, planning out from the start goals on an hour-by-hour basis (using hourly iterations) with a set of things that needed doing I could pull from. I tried this by the end, where I started to pick up the pace, but it was too little too late.

Code by the end is on github for the curious. https://github.com/MorleyDev/ld24Evolution

tl;dr - I failed hard, but had a blast doing so.

[Mego]

tl;dr - I failed hard, but had a blast doing so.

Whenever I do programming projects, I always get stuck trying to write better code instead of writing working code and getting something rolled out. I feel your pain.

[MorleyDev]

Yeah, it's the problem with personal projects. With business projects you have some very nice requirements, and often that alone will keep you on task. Then you have a whole team you can bounce around ideas with and who can keep each other on track, and you can spend time refactoring and reviewing each others work...

At work I actually get things *done*, and if I'd of planned things properly from the start, maybe set up a kinda quick-scrum for task management and really nailed down the specific requirements of what I wanted to do instead of coding in their vague and general direction as I figured out exactly what things would look like...oh well, shoulda coulda woulda I guess xD

[MagmaMcFry]

I just can't write fast and hackish code without feeling unclean

QFT

[MorleyDev]

This is kinda why I like a well maintained test suite. During that refactoring stage you get to move all that ugly code into beautiful discrete and clean separations to be injected as dependencies, all whilst keeping your code "in the green". It's somewhat cathartic...must be what confessional feels like to a catholic.

"I'm sorry father, but I haven't maintained a strict separation of requirements in my classes."
"Refactor and all is forgiven, my child."

[dreadmullet]

MorleyDev: I was the guy commenting on your livestream, asking questions and making fun of your pronounciations of things. ("Paradijims"? Really? ) I wanted to take a look at your code, but I cannot for the life of me get it to compile. At first I tried to use Visual Studio, which was a nightmare. Then I got Eclipse up and running with a working Hello World program, but however I try to open your project it never works. It seems the best method to open the entire project is to create a workspace and then Import --> "Existing Projects into Workspace". However, in Executable/code/main.cpp there are tons of things underlined with red, notably shared_ptr, and I can't figure it out. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

EDIT: It's not just shared_ptr that doesn't get loaded, it's also things that are part of the project, such as "ld24::Services::ServiceFactory". Also, "#include <jml/concurrent/std_thread.hpp>" is the first thing that can't be found.