Yesterday I went ahead and practiced a bit of tile work in BYOND. It's generally not too difficult to make basic tiles do what they're supposed to do. Making them do that and be interesting as well? That might take some time. I consider it a good beginning.

Due to a serious and unforeseen setback, I barely got anything done at all with the Ludum Dare entry yesterday. I'll be trying to piece what I've got together in time for the Jam, which is due tomorrow. In the meantime, have another screenshot:

Spent more of this morning than I would've liked trying to get a couple of libraries to work that I hadn't realized I needed. Fun times. In spite of that, I'm about where I expected to be with this. Feels like I'm miles behind the power curve, though.

Well, the fifth and final round of voting just started for the Ludum Dare theme. Here are the choices what made it this far:

Well, not so much. I didn't produce a playable game, but I now have a basic TCP/IP server with the data structures in place to function like a game server. It's progress… sorta.

With the Ludum Dare a week away, I'm using this weekend as an opportunity for a dry run. After all, it's no good having grand ideas and spiffy design documents if you can't get your tools and talent lined up to get things done by the deadline.

Quite a few of them, actually. I'm starting to feel like I'm chasing my tail trying to keep track of all the game making competitions cropping up. And they're conflicting, which means I need to be picking and choosing.

Sounds more dramatic than it is, I suppose. I'm here because someone *cough*TOAST*cough* dropped an announcement on the Ludum Dare front page about an upcoming contest. My first reaction was trying to ignore it. I'm just getting back into programming and game design, and I'm already preparing for a somewhat …