OddballGreg - Ludum Dare 31

This wonderfully descriptive screenshot which has the words "Ludum Dare 31" in it a grand total of 5 times, (in case you weren't sure), was taken from http://ludumdare.com/compo/.

A while ago I spoke about my enjoyment of game design and detailed a desire of mine to participate in the upcoming Ludum Dare 31 game creation competition. If you like fun indie games being made in absurdly short periods then you're bound to enjoy this.

First and foremost, I should point out that I was unable to brush up on my game designing skills, (that is to say, I'm useless at it currently), due to various events ranging from family hospital visits to Durban holidays. Excuses aside, I did also mention in that article that I would likely end up participating in one at some point or other, so don't feel too let down... (Please?)

Regardless of my non-participation, the Ludum Dare competition is still a wonderful and interesting event to follow. So what is Ludum Dare? By all means, I implore you to watch the video below which explains it in a particularly... novel way? (Comparable to An0nymoose's videos... I'm not entirely sure what to make of it... but it works.)

tl:dw: make a game in 48/72 hours, drink coffee, get rated, feel tired, sleep.

So how does it all work? Well, for the past month or so, people have been submitting potential theme's for Ludum Dare 31, (31 obviously meaning this is the 31st Ludum Dare), at which point sometime recently, they stopped taking submissions and began multiple rounds of voting to pick off theme candidates up until this point, where it is about 4 hours to the start of the competition and they are busy voting between the final few candidates to determine what the theme for this Ludum Dare is.

Once the theme is determined then it is go-go-go for the participants of either the "comp" or "jam" as mentioned in the video to get to work designing a game around that theme. (If you're unsure, the comp is where one person makes the whole game in 48 hours, the jam is where any number of people can make a game using pre-existing parts in 78 hours.) Once the game is finished, they need to upload it to the Ludum Dare website whereupon it is reviewed by the designers competitors and rated on various things including innovation, fun, graphics, sound, etc.

So why would anyone subject themselves to what is a weekend of torment in the form of sleep deprivation, caffeine overdose and general deadline stress? Well, creative inspiration is always a good motivation. Recognition in the game making community is another. Or maybe you'll even hear one of those strange individuals that call it... dare I say it? "Fun". *Gasp*

Jokes aside, the entire event is always fun to watch as a great multitude of people cover their game-designing processes in great detail, many of whom even going as far as to Live Stream their work via Twitch.TV, of course, with my ever-mentioned YouTube favorite Quill18 being among them. Below I've linked his "Post Mortem" of the game he created for Ludum Dare 30 and his thoughts on it and various other games he's created for the competition. I highly suggest giving it a watch as it provides a fantastic insight into the event and may prove the final temptress in getting you to watch his live-stream when he starts working on his LD31 game.

Interested to know more? Or simply have some questions about the competition or it's rules that you feel I didn't properly explain in this post? If either, do be sure to let us know down in the comments below, or via Facebook/Twitter. We here at TCSA love to hear your feedback and will be happy to assist. And of course, if you enjoy finding out about awesome stuff on the web and world then do please be sure to like the Official TCSA Facebook page and/or follow us on Twitter using the associated buttons on the bar to the left to get all the latest posts as they're published. Also, do be sure to share posts you enjoyed with your friends as it helps us out a great deal. Regardless of what you do, I thank you for having taken the time to read this post; hope that you have/had an absolutely FANTASTIC day, and I will speak again soon.

Happy game-making (or watching) my friends.

(New drinking game, read the article again and have a drink every time "Ludum Dare" is said.)

JovialJman - English 101 (Some Interesting English Concepts)

Dictionaries are a good way to show English.

English being one of the most widely spoken languages, spoken by about 1.5 billion people or more, have very interesting roots and things about it that not many people know. Lets talk about that.

Vsauce has done a video with the title of ENGLISH. I will talk about some of the points Michael made, but I highly recommend you watch the video. In the year 400 A.D. and earlier, there were people that were named Angles, (not because they were good at maths, teehee), and after the roman ruling period a lot of the Angles migrated from their homeland Anglii, (what is now northern Germany) to a land called Britannia, (Britain) which was named after the people that lived there. Now so many of these Angles lived on this island that it was referred to as Angel land, which then came to be the county name of England.

This image is taken from wikipedia, showing an early map of North Africa, Europe and a bit of Asia

Now in 1066, the normans invaded the land and won, and this event is believed to be the biggest change to the English language. One of the changes that the normans brought were the words of the meat they ate, (i.e. pork and beef), while the natives still called the animals with their own words, (i.e. pig and cow), and because of this, English is one of the very few languages that have different words for the meat of the animal then the name of the animal itself.

Now if you take that into consideration, you will have Germanic derived words, and Latin derived words. English has taken a lot of words from other languages and calls them english. Greek derived words are used for specific things, like things in science and biology, where as informal, and rude things would be germanic, (this is due to the Normans making that the common tongue offensive) and there are others.

Accents and dialects are something on their own as well. For instance Americans sound quite different to Europeans, and both of those nation speakers would sound different to people that are taught and brought up in another language then learnt to speak english. Some nations have rather Stereotypical accents associated with them. Like in the beginning of this paragraph when I generalized the countries you would most probably think of one accent for the group, where in fact in one country there may be 10's of accents. This to some degree may also lend itself to the spelling differences as well.

Americans spell some words different to those of Britain, or have different words for them entirely. Colour and color is a good example of that, gas and petrol is another, (gas coming from Gasoline and petrol from petroleum). Tom Scott has done a few videos on english in this playlist, and I would recommend watching all of them as it is very interesting. OP english is a widely debated subject on pronunciation. How would people in the Shakespearean era sound like? Well this video may help.

Now English is still evolving and many new words are made every year. Noob has made its way into the Oxford Dictionary, whereas just a few years ago it was only considered slang. Many words like this have slowly made their way into our speech. Now when does a noise become a new word? Well this is hard to answer directly, but Oxford Dictionary, (the place where many Scrabble players and others will look to see if a certian arrangement of letters is a legitimate word) usually adds a word to their list when it becomes apparent that it is used by enough people often enough with a particular meaning for it.

Now english is known to be really confusing to learn if you are not a native speaker already, words have silent letters in them that seem to serve no purpose, (pterodactyl is one), and others words that you would think would mean one thing but means the opposite or something completely different, (these words are known as misnomers one of which is inflammable which I have mentioned before). Then you get words that were in the dictionary that weren't actually meant to be there. Dord is a famous example of this, and Vsauce made a brilliant video on it, (I seem to really like Vsauce, but who wouldn't)

Now, (sadly because it is early morning), I have to end this post. This was more of a history lesson, but don't fret as I shall continue this topic in the next post where I talk about point of view and grammar to a certian extent. I am sorry i have been MIA these past several days, but I am back in action and shall post the following blogs in a more timely manner to suit you, the readers, a bit better. I hope you have enjoyed today's post (supposed to be yesterday) and if you did, or would like to ask, tell me/us anything please do so in the comments below and/or on Facebook/Twitter. If you would like to see the newest post as they are published please follow us on Twitter and/or like us on Facebook using the associated buttons on the bar to the left. Thank you for taking the time to read today's post, and I hope you have/had a wonderful day.

Keep learning comrades.