The theme for LD17 was ‘Islands’. I did a small game about a group of islands having a problem with an invasive species.

Here’s a screenshot:

My journal for this project is here. You can play the game, see the in-progress builds, and get my source code here. My entry isn’t all that much to look at, but the blitting engine seems to be running well on my machine, and I did some different things (compared to my usual methods) for collision detection. I’ll write a more detailed AAR over on the LD site in a few days. My AAR is here. I’ll write another post when the results are out (judging is still in progress).

-TF

Ludum Dare 17 is going to be next weekend (23-25 April). I’ll be participating in this one. (I missed LD 16 due to work, so this time I requested vacation time ) Theme voting should open next week.

If you’re in Canada, To-Jam 5 is running the same weekend.

And to get you fired up about whichever event you’re going to participate in or watch, here’s Sid Meier at a 48-hr competition held at U. Michigan (some neat anecdotes about the early game industry as well):

(via the Escapist, originally from Dell (I think))

As an aside, what’s the right word to describe these events? LD is structured as a competition and has judging, but ‘winning’ or ‘beating the competition’ isn’t really the point. From what I gather, the various global game jams are the same way.

Just in case you’re living under a rock, Bay12 released the first new version of Dwarf Fortress in 2 years on April 1st. Specifically, version 0.31.01 … otherwise known as the much rumored DF2010, which makes a number of changes to … lots of things. Check the wiki for mirrors and the bare-bones documentation.

I’d say my productivity for the next month is shot… but who would I kidding? I haven’t been productive in years.