Ludum Dare!

This weekend is yet another Ludum Dare weekend, which means there will be two intertwined internet gamemaking events: a 48-hour Competition in which the goal is to make a game from scratch* all by yourself, and a 72-hour Jam in which the goal is to make a game from whatever you want with whomever you want. They both start tomorrow, August 24, at 8:00 PM EST.

Here are the rules: ludumdare.com/compo/rules/

There have been text-based Ludum Dare games in the past (even aside from my own troll entry a few compos back…), and they are frequently well received, especially if they are web-playable. So if you find yourself with nothing else to do this weekend, you should check it out.

*“scratch” is somewhat vaguely defined, but basically the idea is that you have to create all assets (except fonts and sampled instruments) yourself, and any pre-written code you use has to have been available to everyone

So just to clarify, using existing IF software like inform, tads etc. would be fine?

Yeah, any existing development environment is A-OK; a fair portion of LD games are written in GameMaker or using the Adobe Flash interface. Additionally, libraries/extensions are fine as long as they are publicly available – the point is that you’re not allowed to write a big chunk of code in advance and call it a “library” unless everyone else can use it too. (If you do make a library/extension in advance, it’s considered polite to post to the LD blog about it.)