Dodongo dislikes smoke.

So we're about 8 hours into LD #20 now! The theme? "It's dangerous to go alone! Take this!"

I'm really excited about how well I'm doing! I ditched SDL, SFML, and C++ all together, and have been teaching myself Python and Pygame on the fly! And it's working! I'm about to take a ~6 hour sleep break, though... today really wore me out what with work and all, so I really can't pull of a productive all-nighter after all. Ah well. I have faith that I'll be able to finish in time! Once I am further along, I'll post some links and screen shots here.

Almost time for LD!

Yep! LD #20 starts tomorrow night and I am... not at all ready! I was making fair progess on my SFML conversion when I realized that the version I was using (1.6), dispite being the stable release, was actually waaaay unusably, and I needed to instal the dev version (2.0). Seems simple enough, yes? No. Apparently they don't just distribute the thing, noooo, that would be too easy. You can't even just compile it. You have to use cmake to compile the project to compile the library. Oh, and to get cmake to work you have to do some other hundred things that I STILL can't figure out after about 3 days of trying. I'm damn near ready to give up on the whole thing... but I shall not!

But not giving up doesn't really leave me with much. I can either go with my semi-functional SDL implementation of my framework, or... I don't know what other options I have. Teach myself Python and PyGame on the fly? I'm honestly considering it. I still really like the idea of using SFML, but I just plain can't get the darn thing working!

I suppose I'll know one way or another by tomorrow night...

One Step Forward, All Steps Back.

Well, as I mentioned I'd begun working in OpenGL for my engine. Not much sooner than I began that, though, I discovered SFML. I've now decided to throw out nearly my entire code base to ditch SDL in favor of SFML. There are a couple reasons; One is that it handles the OpenGL I wanted already. Another is that it has support for audio without further ibraries, and it does some socket stuff and has a few other features I'm interested in playing with. I dunno... we'll see where it leads. I'm probably about 1/3 of the way done rebuilding my previous capabilities. Onward to LD!

Three-Toed Tree Lazy

So... turns out work is a pain. Specifically, it saps all of my time and energy that would be better spent working on games. I've managed to get some bits of work done on the AF Engine/Framework, but nothing much to write home about at this point. Am am in the process of converting it from SDL blitting to using OpenGL, though, which will be nice once it's done.

Big news though! In an effort to refocus my efforts, I've decided to participate in the upcoming Ludum Dare 20! This is a contest help about every 4 months in which you are given the task of creating a full game based on a theme revealed at the start of the contest, and you must complete it within 48 hours! EEK! It seems like a good test of game design might, as well as programming endurance. It starts in roughly 9 days! That doesn't leave me much time to prepare.

As part of my preparation I spent some time looking for utilities I can use during the contest. One great one I want to share is bfxr, little program for generating sound effects. It's awesome! Try it out!