Nizzotch
2 HN recommenders · recommended in 3 months, 2015–2026
5:51 · 475K views · Aug 31, 2011
A timelapse of Notch (Markus Persson) creating his Ludum Dare 21 entry, Prelude of the Chambered, from scratch in 48 hours.
HN recommends it as a way to demystify game creation and shows what an experienced developer can build in a 48-hour jam.
3 comments from Hacker News
First, congratulations! I would demystify the process of creation. Show them your wireframes, your pencil sketches, talk about the business v. creative push and pull. Make it interactive - break them into groups of 2-3 each for 5 min and show them Notch's time-lapse in the background on projector while you have them work on exercises in ideation - what would their game be? what would the levels, characters, and challenges be. They don't have to present - just get them comfortable with the first step of creation - putting it on 'scratch' paper. If you have time, deconstruct Flappy Bird. The scrolling left to right background v. making the bird move. How the object detection is greatly simplified when you have only one coordinate to detect (y-bird and y-pipeTop/y-pipeBottom). How adding gravity to the bird (downward velocity) allows you to fly the bird. "Making Metagun" by Notch [LINK] "Creating Prelude of the Chambered" by Notch this video
The games he made for programming competitions like ludum dare were decent. I especially enjoyed Prelude to the chambered. [LINK] this video [LINK]
For example, this video Keep in mind, this is 48 hours and he had created a "few" games before this.