We are coming down to the last couple weeks before the competition begins, how are you all prepping?
In past years I have used Java, a language I use professionally and so I am very familiar with. This year I have made the decision to use the competition as an opportunity to learn Scala, a programming language I have been meaning to learn for some time now.
So in all likelihood my game won't be prize-worthy this year but I am still aiming to put together a completed entry!
My prep work so far has involved getting my tooling into place. This includes downloading LibGDX and getting it configured to work with Scala. I have ported their default test app over to Scala and got it work.
Scala runs on the JVM and this year (like previous years) I am packaging the JRE with the game. Unlike previous years however I have managed to ditch around 50% of the size of the JRE meaning that, when zipped, my entry currently stands at a comparatively small 25MB. This should help with my usual tactic of uploading increasingly improved builds of the game as the deadline draws near; the quicker they upload then the closer to the wire I can go!
I have also written a build and deploy script that should take some of the stress out of assembling my deliverable at crunch time - no time-consuming manual steps involved!