Today, I signed up to enter The Week of Awesome II which is a week long game development jam here at www.gamedev.net starting September 22nd. Part of the judging criteria is a 10 point "Participation" score which is based on reporting what you and your team are up to: screenshots, planned features, etc. It should be interesting to watch how the various game jam entries shape up over the week and I suppose it encourages us to not stay in isolation for an entire week. This journal should serve its purpose and get me those easy 10 points. Awww yeah...Starting the competition with 10/100. Watch out people!

Here's my plan for the week before the contest:

• Since we're allowed to make use of non-game specific code such as: sprite loading, physics engines, gui controls, etc., I'm going to clean up my libraries and make sure I can rip them out of my current project when the time comes.
  
• I'm going to work out any installation kinks in test projects to save myself some headache during the time crunch of the competition.
  
• I'd like to look at MonoGame as an alternative in case XNA is tough to deploy, but with only one week to go it may be too late.
  
• And I'm going to check out last year's Week of Awesome to see what a reasonable entry might look like.
  
  These are the tools I'll be using during the game jam:
  [indent=1]Language: C#
  [indent=1]SDK: XNA (or possibly MonoGame)
  [indent=1]Engine: Reusing my own core libraries
  [indent=1]Graphics: Paint.NET
  [indent=1]SoundFX/Music: Free online resources
  [indent=1]Blog: Eck's Journal - Still Flying
  [indent=1]File Hosting: Drop Box
  
  My team will consist of me as the programmer. My wife and/or daughter may do some graphics, sounds, or writing for the game. Even if they don't lend a creative hand, I'm sure they'll be invaluable during jam week - keeping me fed, and making sure I take a shower or two. Thanks in advance ladies!
  
  Wish me luck,
  - Eck
  
  #gdnjam