Not sure if everyone knows but Ludum Dare 26 is this weekend: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ Unfortunately I have prior commitments and cannot participate but to all that are; best of luck and I look forward to playing the entries!

I've been wanting to participate in a Ludum Dare comp for a long time. Depending on the theme, this weekend's Ludum Dare may be my first. The trouble is that to make something good I'd need to be active throughout the weekend but I just don't have time; especially since I wouldn't be using an out-sourced game engine. I wish they'd have a week-long Ludum Dare...

I'm giving it a shot for the first time. It will be my first 'finished' game if I succeed.

I would like to participate once, but not this time. Building a Lego car for an exhibition.

Oh, I hope I can join.

This is fun. Where's the venue?

Only a weekend? From scratch? Can't make anything worthy in that timespan.

Only a weekend? From scratch? Can't make anything worthy in that timespan.

Maybe you should give "game maker" style editors a chance so that you can be more productive.

More seriously though, if you check the rules you are allowed to use any personal base-code as long as you're willing to release it to the community, you're allowed to create or make use of content generators, and you're definitely allowed to use existing libraries such as SFML, SDL, et al. which can provide an excellent starting point. It's a great experience even if you don't end up succeeding, and a lot of people do manage to make some great (and not-so-great) games within the time limit

This is fun. Where's the venue?

Venue is your house, I am sure there are some jam sites but those usually exist for the Global Game Jam.

Only a weekend? From scratch? Can't make anything worthy in that timespan.

You'd be amazed at what you can create when under the gun. You also learn a mountain because of the time constraint. For example my 'Rob, The Dumbass Robber' game that I originally wrote for a weekend Jam here, I originally planned the whole game but when push came to shove I had to decide what features to cut in order to get something "playable" at the end of the competition. You also learn to live with certain bugs, for example I spent (too much) time trying to fix my path finding display for my sprites, they wouldn't walk down the middle of the tiles and in the end I decided I really can live with the guards "appearing" to walk through walls instead of the door frame half a tile over, but I cannot live without this feature or with this bug. All in all, I would really try A jam if you can put up the time. I look forward to participating in my next Jam but unfortunately the last two have fallen on booked weekends.

Best of luck everyone.

The theme this time is minimalism. This immediately rules out most ideas I had...