Cool, I got 39th. Ludum Dare is always a blast, I encourage anyone with even the slightest interest in game dev to give it a go sometime. It's an awesome excuse to write some really ugly code and not feel guilty about it.

It's great to see LD growing so fast, my first one (#16) had ~120 entries, this time there were almost 600.

I'm a little surprised that Notch's was only at 13... That was a pretty good game!

I'll have to go back and find out what was even better.

This competition was a real push for me. I've been wanting to get into game programming for far too long, and never took the plunge. I'm hoping to be ready to create at least a crappy game during the next one. Of course, that means making many crappy games before then. :)

I spent almost the full 48 hours watching Notch - and I thought his game would do better as well.

The thing that I like most about his effort (which of course has no bearing on the "goodness" of the game) is that he did it completely and entirely from scratch. Most of the other entries were "flash game using game library x with physics library y and random libraries i,j, and k".

He started with a blank project and added everything from his brain (not even consulting Google once!) It was absolutely amazing to watch.

Yeah. I watched 4 hours (the first 4!) and skimmed another 10. Sadly, I missed it live and had to rely on what I found on the net. (Wish some help from people here and other sites.)

Watching him build the raycaster was a 'whoa, I definitely need to up my game' moment.

It also made it clear that he knew every aspect of game design inside and out.

Well, sure, that's impressive in and of itself. But this contest is ultimately about the game, not the code.

Well, you know what they say: "To make something from scratch, you first have to create the universe". But I get your point, and I agree.

Set a 48 hour limit for yourself!

Eventually, yeah. I'm going to just work on getting something done first, without adding extra difficulty. :)

But yeah, eventually, I need to set aside some 48-hour periods for practice... Or at least a few sets of hours that add up to 48. Not sure I can interrupt my life that often. Every 4 months is fine, but more than that is tough.

Flash still dominates. No JS it seems.

Flash's general architecture makes it a lot easier to create things like 2D games. You certainly can write great games in JS, but it requires a helluva lot more domain knowledge, as well as a lot more tweaking and hackery. Many things that are simple in Flash, such as collision detection, are not in JS.

Flash is essentially a system for moving and manipulating sprites, which fits perfectly with a 2D game. HTML/JS is an overgrown document layout system, and it shows.

There is a port of Box2D to Javascript (http://box2d-js.sourceforge.net/). I don't know what state it's in, I've only ever used the C++ version personally.

Which doesn't negate what you said at all, but like with everything else people do in Javascript, creating games with it will get less annoying over time as more people create things like that.

Then there are things like Pyjamas that let me write this silly asteroids game in really just a few hours: http://rumsey.org/space/Space.html. It's written entirely in Python (except it uses Flash for sound effects), but compiled to Javascript. I wrote that a couple of years ago, and haven't really followed Pyjamas since, but it was fun.

(and yes I know it's got errors depending on the browser, but it should work in anything but IE. I'm sure if I got a newer Pyjamas and recompiled it it would fix it for newer IE versions too.)

This is true. Perhaps competitions like this will help the public realize that Flash isn't dead after all (unlike the countless articles that have appeared on HN and claim this).

Yes, unfortunately Flash isn't very nice on OSX (CPU usage is very high).

You think LD is going to affect the public's perception of Flash more than say Farmville et al? What?

You should see EaselJs[1]. It makes creating games in canvas 2D very easy. The creator, Grant Skinner[2], is very famous on the Flash community, and ported many of Flash concepts to EaselJs.

[1] http://easeljs.com/

[2] https://github.com/gskinner

That'll eventually be a non-issue, as js libraries arise that abstract away all that stuff.

Right now it seems we're in the phase of tons of scattered libraries, all with their own pros/cons, often written by just one or two folk. But eventually something awesome will appear.

HTML5 based game engines and frameworks take a look at(https://github.com/bebraw/jswiki/wiki/Game-Engines)

Yet when I was lurking in #ludumdare on IRC during the contest, there were quite a few Canvas-based entries 'in progress'.

flash is still the dominant language, however there is a mutant among those entries. http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-21/?uid=2952

Technically it doesnt use flash, it's a language that gets translated to flash, and crap tons other languages. The language is built from ground up to be translated.

I am using it right now to develop a cross platform mobile game. It translates to c++ which runs virtually anywhere, and for android version it even takes advantage of NDK.

http://www.haxenme.org/

One surprising thing about it is that, this technology is old (in digital timespan) it's been around for 6 years and the NME engine, it's been around for 4 years, it still surprises me that no one knows about this.

Is this NME the same/similar to the ML lookalike from nekovm/haxe?

I have just boundless respect for these games. I can understand how the code could be done in 48 hours, but how to tweak the gameplay in that time is just amazing.

I'm sorry Prelude didn't win... I feel a connection to it even though all I did was watch him code it. Awesome though, now I know how to kill my morning.