So I had heard about Ludum Dare game jams before, but never participated in one. It just so happened that they were running a very loosely ruled 48 hour mini jam this past weekend and I submitted a game for it (and its actually kinda fun).

You can play it on itch.io

Prism Ship – Game 1/11

One of the hardest parts was I was trying to make the controls touch friendly, so it could be played on a smart phone or tablet (screen size/ scaling still needs to be made mobile friendly). The touch controls are a little more limited than the keyboard consequently. The keyboard allows movement in all 4 directions using WASD or the arrow keys while touch only allows left and right movement by touching to one side. I actually find it easier to drag my finger along under the “ship” to move it (which is why there is space under it).

Originally I was just drawing boxes to the screen, but forcing the browser to draw every update is a little slow and resource taxing so I made some simple graphics (that are essentially the same boxes) using a wonderfully useful and simple site called make8bitart. The interface is intuitive and very easy to use. Saving is as simple as dragging the image to your desktop from the browser. Highly recommend.

Lots of improvements to be made but not bad for my first game. Next week I will begin working on a simple high score server for it.

I Want to Be a Better Developer