So.. that was fun!
Let's do a quick post mortem on Pixel Beard, while it's all still fresh in the mind.
Two weeks is probably about the minimum for a jam I can do these days just due to time constraints.. I didn't even bother with Ludum Dare this time round, as I just cannot dedicate an entire weekend to something. As it turns out, I'm not all that great at finding time over two weeks either...
Week One.
I effectively had about 2-3 hours a day; an hour before work, my lunch hour, and an hour after work. I was able to quickly build the various mini game stubs together, and was quietly confident that they'd all slot in to the overworld nicely towards the end. In actual fact, they did; as they were written as entirely separate modules, and store and tear down their own state - following a simple init, step, draw, end framework. I also started to add a few things to the general game state that sadly didn't quite make it; factions for instance. There is basic faction code in there - to the degree that there's four types of pirate running around, but they don't really do anything. There was a Stats screen created that showed your relation to them, and you'd be able to do a bit more in the Town to see their relations with each other, but I had to take it out - it needed more work, and there was no time. Additionally, there's Quest code in there, as Towns would give you Quests to go and capture something, and the Treasure Maps would actually give you a minimap cut-out to go find it yourself, rather than just increasing the chance of a treasure chest.
On the plus side, the overworld did get infinite procedural generation of maps. If you swim or sail off the end of one, a new one is generated. You can go back to a previous one as well. The entire world state is renewed each time you spawn, so for what it's worth, you should have infinite maps to play on! There's also a day-night cycle, with nasty sea monsters appearing at night. There was meant to be more ( there's code for sharks and wolves ) but they didn't quite make it.
Unfortunately, when the weekend came, most free time just disappeared as kids started back school and things had to be done for that...
Week Two.
The entirety of week two gave me 8 hours. Four of these were on Thursday night, stripping things back and finishing things off as frantically as I could to get something playable for submission.
As said, kids started back school.. and I lost the hour in the mornings so only really had lunch times. I had also thought we had Friday as well, after misreading the time as ending Friday 12am to mean the end of the day, not the start of it. As such, there is no sound. At all. I also managed to mess up the scaling ( which is now fixed so those with 4k monitors can have fist-sized pixels if you like ) and that "title" splash was done in five minutes on my laptop track pad just before submitting - and it shows. Given the same amount of time as the previous week, I fully believe I'd have been able to get everything else in, but oh well.
It was fun though. I think there's actually a fair amount in here for a change. You can die in a few ways - some fairer than others. And while there's a few minor gameplay bugs, as I basically have only tested it properly today, it's relatively playable and a nice foundation for further work.
Now to find some time to rate the other entries... this "life" thing needs a pause button!