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Ludum Dare 21 winners

68 points by pelf 15y ago

wccrawford 15y ago
I'm a little surprised that Notch's was only at 13... That was a pretty good game! I'll have to go back and find out what was even better. This competition was a real push for me. I've been wanting to get into game programming for far too long, and never took the plunge. I'm hoping to be ready to create at least a crappy game during the next one. Of course, that means making many crappy games before then. :)
- swah 15y ago
  Set a 48 hour limit for yourself!
  - wccrawford 15y ago
    Eventually, yeah. I'm going to just work on getting something done first, without adding extra difficulty. :) But yeah, eventually, I need to set aside some 48-hour periods for practice... Or at least a few sets of hours that add up to 48. Not sure I can interrupt my life that often. Every 4 months is fine, but more than that is tough.
- mrspeaker 15y ago
  I spent almost the full 48 hours watching Notch - and I thought his game would do better as well. The thing that I like most about his effort (which of course has no bearing on the "goodness" of the game) is that he did it completely and entirely from scratch. Most of the other entries were "flash game using game library x with physics library y and random libraries i,j, and k". He started with a blank project and added everything from his brain (not even consulting Google once!) It was absolutely amazing to watch.
  - wccrawford 15y ago
    Yeah. I watched 4 hours (the first 4!) and skimmed another 10. Sadly, I missed it live and had to rely on what I found on the net. (Wish some help from people here and other sites.) Watching him build the raycaster was a 'whoa, I definitely need to up my game' moment. It also made it clear that he knew every aspect of game design inside and out.
  - starwed 15y ago
    Well, sure, that's impressive in and of itself. But this contest is ultimately about the game, not the code.
  - Ideka 15y ago
    Well, you know what they say: "To make something from scratch, you first have to create the universe". But I get your point, and I agree.
rnernento 15y ago
I'm sorry Prelude didn't win... I feel a connection to it even though all I did was watch him code it. Awesome though, now I know how to kill my morning.
swah 15y ago
Flash still dominates. No JS it seems.
- ender7 15y ago
  Flash's general architecture makes it a lot easier to create things like 2D games. You certainly can write great games in JS, but it requires a helluva lot more domain knowledge, as well as a lot more tweaking and hackery. Many things that are simple in Flash, such as collision detection, are not in JS. Flash is essentially a system for moving and manipulating sprites, which fits perfectly with a 2D game. HTML/JS is an overgrown document layout system, and it shows.
  - watty 15y ago
    This is true. Perhaps competitions like this will help the public realize that Flash isn't dead after all (unlike the countless articles that have appeared on HN and claim this).
    - swah 15y ago
      Yes, unfortunately Flash isn't very nice on OSX (CPU usage is very high).
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
    - newobj 15y ago
      You think LD is going to affect the public's perception of Flash more than say Farmville et al? What?
  - Ogre 15y ago
    There is a port of Box2D to Javascript (http://box2d-js.sourceforge.net/ http://box2d-js.sourceforge.net/). I don't know what state it's in, I've only ever used the C++ version personally. Which doesn't negate what you said at all, but like with everything else people do in Javascript, creating games with it will get less annoying over time as more people create things like that. Then there are things like Pyjamas that let me write this silly asteroids game in really just a few hours: http://rumsey.org/space/Space.html http://rumsey.org/space/Space.html. It's written entirely in Python (except it uses Flash for sound effects), but compiled to Javascript. I wrote that a couple of years ago, and haven't really followed Pyjamas since, but it was fun. (and yes I know it's got errors depending on the browser, but it should work in anything but IE. I'm sure if I got a newer Pyjamas and recompiled it it would fix it for newer IE versions too.)
rileya 15y ago
Cool, I got 39th. Ludum Dare is always a blast, I encourage anyone with even the slightest interest in game dev to give it a go sometime. It's an awesome excuse to write some really ugly code and not feel guilty about it. It's great to see LD growing so fast, my first one (#16) had ~120 entries, this time there were almost 600.
bemmu 15y ago
I have just boundless respect for these games. I can understand how the code could be done in 48 hours, but how to tweak the gameplay in that time is just amazing.

68 points by pelf 15y ago

I'm a little surprised that Notch's was only at 13... That was a pretty good game! I'll have to go back and find out what was even better. This competition was a real push for me. I've been wanting to get into game programming for far too long, and never took the plunge. I'm hoping to be ready to create at least a crappy game during the next one. Of course, that means making many crappy games before then. :)

swah 15y ago
Set a 48 hour limit for yourself!
- wccrawford 15y ago
  Eventually, yeah. I'm going to just work on getting something done first, without adding extra difficulty. :) But yeah, eventually, I need to set aside some 48-hour periods for practice... Or at least a few sets of hours that add up to 48. Not sure I can interrupt my life that often. Every 4 months is fine, but more than that is tough.
mrspeaker 15y ago
I spent almost the full 48 hours watching Notch - and I thought his game would do better as well. The thing that I like most about his effort (which of course has no bearing on the "goodness" of the game) is that he did it completely and entirely from scratch. Most of the other entries were "flash game using game library x with physics library y and random libraries i,j, and k". He started with a blank project and added everything from his brain (not even consulting Google once!) It was absolutely amazing to watch.
- wccrawford 15y ago
  Yeah. I watched 4 hours (the first 4!) and skimmed another 10. Sadly, I missed it live and had to rely on what I found on the net. (Wish some help from people here and other sites.) Watching him build the raycaster was a 'whoa, I definitely need to up my game' moment. It also made it clear that he knew every aspect of game design inside and out.
- starwed 15y ago
  Well, sure, that's impressive in and of itself. But this contest is ultimately about the game, not the code.
- Ideka 15y ago
  Well, you know what they say: "To make something from scratch, you first have to create the universe". But I get your point, and I agree.

rnernento 15y ago

I'm sorry Prelude didn't win... I feel a connection to it even though all I did was watch him code it. Awesome though, now I know how to kill my morning.

swah 15y ago

Flash still dominates. No JS it seems.

ender7 15y ago
Flash's general architecture makes it a lot easier to create things like 2D games. You certainly can write great games in JS, but it requires a helluva lot more domain knowledge, as well as a lot more tweaking and hackery. Many things that are simple in Flash, such as collision detection, are not in JS. Flash is essentially a system for moving and manipulating sprites, which fits perfectly with a 2D game. HTML/JS is an overgrown document layout system, and it shows.
- watty 15y ago
  This is true. Perhaps competitions like this will help the public realize that Flash isn't dead after all (unlike the countless articles that have appeared on HN and claim this).
  - swah 15y ago
    Yes, unfortunately Flash isn't very nice on OSX (CPU usage is very high).
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - newobj 15y ago
    You think LD is going to affect the public's perception of Flash more than say Farmville et al? What?
- Ogre 15y ago
  There is a port of Box2D to Javascript (http://box2d-js.sourceforge.net/ http://box2d-js.sourceforge.net/). I don't know what state it's in, I've only ever used the C++ version personally. Which doesn't negate what you said at all, but like with everything else people do in Javascript, creating games with it will get less annoying over time as more people create things like that. Then there are things like Pyjamas that let me write this silly asteroids game in really just a few hours: http://rumsey.org/space/Space.html http://rumsey.org/space/Space.html. It's written entirely in Python (except it uses Flash for sound effects), but compiled to Javascript. I wrote that a couple of years ago, and haven't really followed Pyjamas since, but it was fun. (and yes I know it's got errors depending on the browser, but it should work in anything but IE. I'm sure if I got a newer Pyjamas and recompiled it it would fix it for newer IE versions too.)

rileya 15y ago

Cool, I got 39th. Ludum Dare is always a blast, I encourage anyone with even the slightest interest in game dev to give it a go sometime. It's an awesome excuse to write some really ugly code and not feel guilty about it. It's great to see LD growing so fast, my first one (#16) had ~120 entries, this time there were almost 600.

bemmu 15y ago

I have just boundless respect for these games. I can understand how the code could be done in 48 hours, but how to tweak the gameplay in that time is just amazing.