6th Ludum Dare 48h Contest
Ever wanted to design a game? Of course you have but most of us don’t have the time to put into it. Well problem solved, just join and compete in the annual Ludum Dare 48h contest (LD48). Ludum Dare is a website for independent game developers to congregate and converse. It has articles on various things pertinent to indie devs including conferences, tools, etc.
LD48 is a game programming contest where you are given a general topic and 48 hours to create a game. The topic is selected hours before the contest starts by the community from a large list collected over the past few months. Your goal is to create some semblance of a game that uses the topic in some way (eg topic: Random game: gallery shooter with random enemies). After 48 hours the contest closes and the judging begins with awards being handed out in several categories. There are some loose guidelines and some strong ones too. Essentially you are not allowed to use any tools that have game logic built-in. Also everything for the game needs to be created within the 48 hours so code reuse is like cheating. Internet sources are ok if they are available to everyone including libraries and tools (eg pyGame, OpenGL, GLUT, etc). For more details see the sign up site linked below.
The LD48 contest has been around for several years, but this is the first year I am going to compete. I signed up for LD48-4 but when it came time for the contest I was swamped with work and had to bail out. This year I am planning on putting together something “great”. I encourage everyone out there to give it a try if only for the experience in attempting something so crazy. It all starts at 9:00pm EST on April 15th so all you need is one free weekend.