YOUR LUDUMDESK – AN ANNOTATED GUIDE

Here is my workspace. There are many like it, but this one is mine. As a veteran of a number of LudumDares, I have reduced my desktop objects to the bare minimum, each an essential ingredient in the fast food gamemaking frenzy that is LD. We’ll use CLOCK DIRECTION NOTATION for pointing out each object and describing it and its function. By the end of this post you will be a gamedeveloper expert*!

At 12 O’clock we have the computerised distraction device, used for viewing streams and twitter feeds of better gamedevs. I recommend you get one with at least two cables sticking out of it, as shown here.

2 O’clock is the MAGIC DIVINING CRYSTAL used to predict the theme back in the old days when it wasn’t predetermined by a secret cabal of shady gamedevelopers hiding behind the illusion of voter choice. Nowadays you require a crystal like this to prevent ectoludic energy vortexes sucking you into your own game around the 47.9 hour mark in the competition.

BARELY VISIBLE at 4 O’clock is a ninja stealth mouse the size of your head, used to click the refresh button at compo commencement to ensure no-one can load/see the theme on the website. Don’t go for anything too reliable, you’ll want to be able to blame your poor game art on this when you write your postmortem.

6 O’clock is a keyboard. Duh. You use it to ask for help in the #ludumdare irc channel. Remember to prefix all of your help requests with ‘ifire’ or ‘Sol_HSA’, the names of the two automated helpbots.

8 O’clock ALSO A KEYBOARD did I blow your mind? No. It’s a little keyboard, it only makes little songs. Perfect for a gamejam amirite? Without one of these you’ll be reduced to cheating and stealing your music like everyone else does. Even with one you’ll cheat and steal your music, but you’ll be able to deny it more convincingly.

9 O’clock is a notepad and mechanical pencil in case you want to write a letter to someone during the compo, explaining what a terrible theme was chosen and how you would have done so much better if only people hadn’t picked EVOLUTION again. Or write your last will, bequeathing your earthly possessions to me for writing such a helpful guide.

10 O’clock is a little USB hub. I don’t really know what it’s for.

11 O’clock is a knife. Used purely for self defence in the event of assassination attempts. You might think that’s UNLIKELY but this is LUDUMDARE we’re talking about here. Also if the dare is going REALLY BADLY and you hate your game and wonder why you even bother trying.. you can look at your knife and say ‘wow I have a cool knife, i can totally make a cool game’.

That’s all you need to know. Remember that success in ludumdare is all about having a nicely laid out desk and a computer with every game making tool known to man preinstalled. In fact you should spend the first 46 hours or so setting up your desk just like this, and the game will pretty much just make itself.