Oh wow I can’t believe it’s over.
I’m pretty hyper despite being exhausted. I actually got in a lot of what I wanted to get here: the animals breed with each other, successive generations mutate slightly, and successful creatures survive and breed while the less efficient ones die out. Now, they’re all stupid and vegetarian, but I’d say that’s pretty good for a weekend’s work.
I don’t know if I’m ever going to work on this project again, but it was a hell of a learning experience and it should make for a truly excellent portfolio piece. I hope following my progress on this has been interesting for you guys. I’ve kind of lost all perspective and utterly destroyed my brain with caffeine and adrenaline at this point.
So yeah. If anyone wants to try out the game, it’s available here. If you’re a programmer and are interested in the source code, that’s all uploaded here. My entry is up on the LD site here: voting is only open to other entrants, but you can see how well I do if you’re interested.
If you’re sick of LD updates, well, I have good news and bad news. The good news is, regularly scheduled essays will resume on Friday– the bad news is, the first one will almost certainly be a post-mortem of this project and experience.
Why is it called Ludum Dare? (Should have asked you the other day, but didn’t.)
Latin for “to give a game” apparently.
Up until recently I’d assumed it was Ludum (“Game” in Latin) Dare (the English word). I actually prefer my interpretation, since the challenge to make a game in 48 hours is quite the dare. I guess that makes it a double entendre, whether or not it was intentional.
I’d assumed the same re: “dare.” One of those fortuitous coincidences, I guess. I wondered if the etymology of the English word might trace back to the Latin one, but it doesn’t.