Game Template for Ludum Dare

I’ve spent a little time creating some template code for the next Ludum Dare event, after failing at LD #17. I wanted to share this, in case any other Linux devs can benefit. I made this template using Linux (x86),  C++, CMake, SFML, GLee, OpenGL, and OpenAL.

My template doesn’t do much, which is sort of the point given the nature of Ludum Dare. I wanted to gather up some basic functionality that I consider to be fair to use, and probably already available to many other LD’ers using existing game engines like OGRE, etc. Using this I hope to be able to get a quicker start during the events. Current features include:

• Get a window up on the screen. Admittedly, this isn’t too hard thanks to SFML.
• Load music / sound files from disk, and play them.
• Load UV texture-mapped 3D objects exported from Blender 2.49 and display them using OpenGL VBOs. The Blender export script I’ve created is included.
• Render bitmapped fonts using image files loaded from disk.
• Build either a Linux or Windows executable by changing a CMake flag (I have a mingw32 cross compilation set up, installed).

You can download my template here: ld48_template.tar.gz

If you can use this, or have time to build the sample app and give me some feedback, that would be awesome. Thanks!

-Windsor

P.S. I just read PoV’s post about packaging Linux applications. I’ll have to put some of those techniques to use in the next version of my template.