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.

So what tools am I using for this? FreeBASIC for the coding and mtPaint if I wind up needing artwork. I don't have anything lined up for sound, but I've seen a lot of suggestions floating around out there, so hopefully I'll find something useful before next weekend. And of course, I'll be using the internets if I have to look something up in a hurry. I just have to keep my reference tool from distracting me to the point where I don't get any work done. Good luck with that one… ohai, there's a roguelike contest going on…

*ahem*

Anyway, that's the plan. I did tinker a bit last night with a game making tool called BYOND. This yielded some mildly interesting results that wouldn't blow anyone's mind. Nothing spectacular really, I was just following a basic tutorial. It did yield my first attempt at pixel art in years. I'm not sure I'll choose to build too many games with this, but it does let you build a network ready world pretty quickly, and has a passable pixeling tool built in.

But enough with the procrastination, I've got work to do. And yeah, I know… I haven't jumped on the "big RPG ideas" bandwagon posting thing yet, but that's because I'm not actively working on an RPG this week. I'm playing a different game of numbers for my warmup weekend: Nim.

Whaaat?