{"author_link":"\/users\/hilvon","author_name":"Hilvon","author_uid":"hilvon","comments":[],"epoch":1501689704,"event":"LD39","format":"md","ldjam_node_id":47707,"likes":0,"metadata":{"p_key":"100042","p_author":"Hilvon","p_authorkey":"1009192","p_urlkey":"315752","p_title":"Runaway Convoy Post Mortem.","p_cat":"LDJam ","p_event":"LD39","p_time":"1501689704","p_likes":"0","p_comments":"0","p_status":"WAYBACK","us_key":"1009192","us_name":"Hilvon","us_username":"hilvon","event_start":"1501200000","event_key":"74","event_name":"LD 39"},"node":{"_collation":{"body_sanitizer":"TextUtils::SanitizeHTML via existing importer","event":"LD39","removed_author":false},"_superparent":32802,"_trust":7,"author":9192,"body":"Now, after a few days have past since the LD and my brain is recovering from the mad rush during Development, I am ready to look back on my experience and share it with you.\n\n[my game can be found here](https:\/\/ldjam.com\/events\/ludum-dare\/39\/runaway-convoy)\n\nFirst of all \u2013 this was my best LD to date. I had a rough start, but eventually I made a game I was content with, I had some time to add polish and didn't waste all of it. :smile:\n\nProcess \u2013 Before the LD I spent some time planning when to work and the initial idea was:\n\n-\tNot to stay up till theme announcement. Instead sleep well so I can start a few hours into the LD, but fresh and ready (rather than having to cut 6-10 hours to sleep during the LD itself).\n-\tStart by creating assets, so on the scripting phase I don\u2019t rely on placeholder assets.\n-\tHave playable core mechanic by 17:00 Saturday.\n\nBut \u201cno plan survives reality\u201d. Initially all went well. I woke up in the morning and checked the theme. That wasn\u2019t one of my upvoted themes\u2026 in fact I am sure that was one I downvoted in Final round, but\u2026 That\u2019s how democracy works.\n\nI spent some time and come up with a concept of \u201cRunning out of Political power\u201d. The concept was to have a sequence of turns, on each turn player is presented with several problems, and must decide which minister would be overseeing the solution, and how much of budget is allocated into solving the issue.\n\nDepending on some parameters the problem could be either solved \u2013 which would give you some power, or failed (depending on some properties of the problem and Minister handling it)\n\nIn process of it the minister could display incompetence, corruption and\/or publicity blunders, which would be criticized by opposition (costing you power). And those negative effects will be cumulative. Meaning that critique will be coming in every turn, unless you fire this minister, and replace it with a new one. Which you might not want to do, as Minister also gain experience, which give them better chance of successfully solving problems in future.\n\nWas this game original\u2026 well\u2026 not the most original. \n\nWas this game over-scoped? Maybe\u2026 But I felt confident in coding the logic for it, so I went ahead. And as I was going to start by creating assets, I came to a question \u2013 what assets I need to create. And that largely depended on what kind of look I wanted to give to the game. First idea was to show a table with a bunch of papers on it\u2026 I tried to arrange something and take a picture, but it was\u2026 mostly crap.\n\nSo I thought up a meeting room with a big table and the ministers sitting next to you\u2026 and so I went into creating 3D models\u2026\n\nTable was easy. Chairs were easy enough too \u2013 especially I only needed the back of them.\n\nAnd then it came to modelling the ministers. That wasn\u2019t the first attempt of me trying to model a humanoid, but it could\u2019ve been my first successful take at it\u2026 :smile: And surprisingly the modelling went pretty well. I modelled a head that looked\u2026 human-like. In fact, there were two heads \u2013 male and female. Then I modelled the upper body\u2026 and I started rigging it, so I could position arms and hands in some ways, and possibly rotate heads so they face the player.\n\nAdding bones was easy. And Blender did a decent job at automatically assigning weights to bones\u2026 but when it can to positioning them it started to rapidly fall apart.\n\nIn hindsight, I could\u2019ve done a couple things to improve the result:\n\n- Add more geometry. I didn\u2019t have nearly enough geometry on the arms. And for good animation having some extra vertices near the joints can go a long way.\n- Modelling hands straight = bad idea. Inverse Kinematics needs to know how to bend your joints. And if you don\u2019t have a slight bent in elbows \u2013 it will get confused and bend your model\u2019s arms in all the unexpected ways.\n- I have a real aversion to assigning weights to control bones. That is a long story why this is\u2026 and this effort not let this happen (while recalculating weights) did cost me some time, while I wasn\u2019t going to use this rig with any stock humanoid animations, so I could just ignore this\u2026\n\nBut anyway\u2026 by 15:00 I still didn\u2019t have a rig I was happy with. And I realized that at this pace I will not have enough time to finish the game\u2026 And so I decided to scrap the idea altogether.\n\nA brief moment of panic later I started coming up with an alternative ideas\u2026 I needed something super-lightweight, to compensate for effectively wasted half of day\u2026 And that is how an idea of a puzzle-game was born.\n\nInstead of having several levels each of which was reasonably easy to complete, it would essentially have one level, that would require several attempts to beat, so finally beating it would give a gratification of completing a game. Sure \u2013 the replay-ability of such a game would be pretty much non-existent, but\u2026 that is a Jam-game\u2026 not a commercial project anyway. :smile:\n\nI picked a pretty tricky puzzle \u2013 the Bridge and Lantern. (Though in comments a lot of people were referencing Wolf-Goat-Cabbage puzzle\u2026 which is also a good one, but an entirely different one) And just to disguise it a bit more I expanded the number of travellers from original 4 to 8 (though at expense of not having each of them unique and expanded the number of possible solutions from 1 to 3) and added a rule for \u201cprotecting civilian ships\u201d which ruled out one of 3 possible \u201ccorrect\u201d solutions leaving 2.\n\nThen I went ahead with a plan to create assets first, and within 1 hour threw together a sprite map with all the ships and some graphical \u201ceffect\u201d. First I drew some designs on paper. Them I digitized them using MS Paint and finally I used Krita to cut out white background.\n\nAnd this approach seem to work quite well. Having the basic assets to begin with allowed me not to use some placeholders, and as soon as the puzzle logic was complete (about midnight) I effectively had the game that could be played.\n\nSo I had the entire Sunday for polishing and adding some mood for the game which allowed me to do some totally unnecessary things like the exposition scene that runs upon game start. Yes. That scene was a shameless rip-off from Star Wars. :smile:\n\nAnd then I decided to do something that I never had time for in my previous games \u2013 add sounds. That was my first time working with BFXR\u2026 and it turned out\u2026 harder than I expected. All those sliders made little to no sense to me, so I basically had to rely on hitting \u201crandomize\u201d button over and over until I heard something reasonable\u2026 Though the \u201cWarp\u201d sound was customized by hand a bit \u2013 adding some falloff length, and vibrations\u2026\n\nAfter getting some sounds in the game, I decided to go all in and add some music. Especially since the exposition scene felt incomplete without it\u2026 so I opened Audiotool.com and\u2026 Well if I felt overwhelmed by BFXR - audiotool simply crushed my by the number of options there. But I was determined and after 5 hours of voluntary sound torture\u2026 I gave up. Basically rage-publishing the game without completing a list of smaller features, like custom UI panel graphics, additional UI information on ships, and so on.\n\nSummary:\n\nWhat went right:\n\n-\tThe workflow. Basic assets firs, scripts later seem to work well. Will definitely do this again.\n-\tThe background. The stars in the background required a custom shader, 5 materials, 3 prefabs and a script to randomize it! The stars were changing colours, slowly rotated and pulsed in size! And nobody noticed it, meaning that the background was\u2026 Perfect. \n-\tSound effects. Yes. It was hard to implement. And it took way more time than was necessary, but I did learn a few things and the sounds I picked didn\u2019t seem to invoke any negative reactions from players.\n-\tGame concept. Based on the feedback \u2013 the players enjoyed having a puzzle game and did in fact felt gratified for completing it once. So the intention was met.\n\nWhat went wrong.\n\n-\tChasing rabbits. \u2013 Not once, but at least 3 times I started chasing the stuff I wasn\u2019t qualified to produce, and that cost me a crapton of time and frustration.\n-\t\u2026 and that is pretty much it. Nothing else that I would call a failure.\n\nIn conclusion:\n\nI aggressively started playing other games and giving feedback \u2013 as soon as I realized that the rating is open, so within a couple of days my game had 20 ratings itself! Which is awesome!\n\nLooking forward for the next jam!\n","comments":0,"created":"2017-08-02T15:55:11Z","files":[],"files-timestamp":0,"id":47707,"love":0,"meta":[],"modified":"2017-08-02T16:02:02Z","name":"Runaway Convoy Post Mortem.","node-timestamp":"2017-08-02T16:02:02Z","parent":34583,"parents":[1,5,9,32802,34583],"path":"\/events\/ludum-dare\/39\/runaway-convoy\/ld39-post-mortem","published":"2017-08-02T16:01:44Z","scope":"public","slug":"ld39-post-mortem","subsubtype":"","subtype":"","type":"post","version":133372},"node_metadata":{"n_key":"47707","n_urlkey":"315752","n_parent":"34583","n_path":"\/events\/ludum-dare\/39\/runaway-convoy\/ld39-post-mortem","n_slug":"ld39-post-mortem","n_type":"post","n_subtype":"","n_subsubtype":"","n_author":"9192","n_created":"1501689311","n_modified":"1501689722","n_version":"133372","n_status":"WAYBACK"},"source_url":"https:\/\/ldjam.com\/events\/ludum-dare\/39\/runaway-convoy\/ld39-post-mortem","text":"Now, after a few days have past since the LD and my brain is recovering from the mad rush during Development, I am ready to look back on my experience and share it with you.\n\n[my game can be found here](https:\/\/ldjam.com\/events\/ludum-dare\/39\/runaway-convoy)\n\nFirst of all \u2013 this was my best LD to date. I had a rough start, but eventually I made a game I was content with, I had some time to add polish and didn't waste all of it. :smile:\n\nProcess \u2013 Before the LD I spent some time planning when to work and the initial idea was:\n\n-\tNot to stay up till theme announcement. Instead sleep well so I can start a few hours into the LD, but fresh and ready (rather than having to cut 6-10 hours to sleep during the LD itself).\n-\tStart by creating assets, so on the scripting phase I don\u2019t rely on placeholder assets.\n-\tHave playable core mechanic by 17:00 Saturday.\n\nBut \u201cno plan survives reality\u201d. Initially all went well. I woke up in the morning and checked the theme. That wasn\u2019t one of my upvoted themes\u2026 in fact I am sure that was one I downvoted in Final round, but\u2026 That\u2019s how democracy works.\n\nI spent some time and come up with a concept of \u201cRunning out of Political power\u201d. The concept was to have a sequence of turns, on each turn player is presented with several problems, and must decide which minister would be overseeing the solution, and how much of budget is allocated into solving the issue.\n\nDepending on some parameters the problem could be either solved \u2013 which would give you some power, or failed (depending on some properties of the problem and Minister handling it)\n\nIn process of it the minister could display incompetence, corruption and\/or publicity blunders, which would be criticized by opposition (costing you power). And those negative effects will be cumulative. Meaning that critique will be coming in every turn, unless you fire this minister, and replace it with a new one. Which you might not want to do, as Minister also gain experience, which give them better chance of successfully solving problems in future.\n\nWas this game original\u2026 well\u2026 not the most original. \n\nWas this game over-scoped? Maybe\u2026 But I felt confident in coding the logic for it, so I went ahead. And as I was going to start by creating assets, I came to a question \u2013 what assets I need to create. And that largely depended on what kind of look I wanted to give to the game. First idea was to show a table with a bunch of papers on it\u2026 I tried to arrange something and take a picture, but it was\u2026 mostly crap.\n\nSo I thought up a meeting room with a big table and the ministers sitting next to you\u2026 and so I went into creating 3D models\u2026\n\nTable was easy. Chairs were easy enough too \u2013 especially I only needed the back of them.\n\nAnd then it came to modelling the ministers. That wasn\u2019t the first attempt of me trying to model a humanoid, but it could\u2019ve been my first successful take at it\u2026 :smile: And surprisingly the modelling went pretty well. I modelled a head that looked\u2026 human-like. In fact, there were two heads \u2013 male and female. Then I modelled the upper body\u2026 and I started rigging it, so I could position arms and hands in some ways, and possibly rotate heads so they face the player.\n\nAdding bones was easy. And Blender did a decent job at automatically assigning weights to bones\u2026 but when it can to positioning them it started to rapidly fall apart.\n\nIn hindsight, I could\u2019ve done a couple things to improve the result:\n\n- Add more geometry. I didn\u2019t have nearly enough geometry on the arms. And for good animation having some extra vertices near the joints can go a long way.\n- Modelling hands straight = bad idea. Inverse Kinematics needs to know how to bend your joints. And if you don\u2019t have a slight bent in elbows \u2013 it will get confused and bend your model\u2019s arms in all the unexpected ways.\n- I have a real aversion to assigning weights to control bones. That is a long story why this is\u2026 and this effort not let this happen (while recalculating weights) did cost me some time, while I wasn\u2019t going to use this rig with any stock humanoid animations, so I could just ignore this\u2026\n\nBut anyway\u2026 by 15:00 I still didn\u2019t have a rig I was happy with. And I realized that at this pace I will not have enough time to finish the game\u2026 And so I decided to scrap the idea altogether.\n\nA brief moment of panic later I started coming up with an alternative ideas\u2026 I needed something super-lightweight, to compensate for effectively wasted half of day\u2026 And that is how an idea of a puzzle-game was born.\n\nInstead of having several levels each of which was reasonably easy to complete, it would essentially have one level, that would require several attempts to beat, so finally beating it would give a gratification of completing a game. Sure \u2013 the replay-ability of such a game would be pretty much non-existent, but\u2026 that is a Jam-game\u2026 not a commercial project anyway. :smile:\n\nI picked a pretty tricky puzzle \u2013 the Bridge and Lantern. (Though in comments a lot of people were referencing Wolf-Goat-Cabbage puzzle\u2026 which is also a good one, but an entirely different one) And just to disguise it a bit more I expanded the number of travellers from original 4 to 8 (though at expense of not having each of them unique and expanded the number of possible solutions from 1 to 3) and added a rule for \u201cprotecting civilian ships\u201d which ruled out one of 3 possible \u201ccorrect\u201d solutions leaving 2.\n\nThen I went ahead with a plan to create assets first, and within 1 hour threw together a sprite map with all the ships and some graphical \u201ceffect\u201d. First I drew some designs on paper. Them I digitized them using MS Paint and finally I used Krita to cut out white background.\n\nAnd this approach seem to work quite well. Having the basic assets to begin with allowed me not to use some placeholders, and as soon as the puzzle logic was complete (about midnight) I effectively had the game that could be played.\n\nSo I had the entire Sunday for polishing and adding some mood for the game which allowed me to do some totally unnecessary things like the exposition scene that runs upon game start. Yes. That scene was a shameless rip-off from Star Wars. :smile:\n\nAnd then I decided to do something that I never had time for in my previous games \u2013 add sounds. That was my first time working with BFXR\u2026 and it turned out\u2026 harder than I expected. All those sliders made little to no sense to me, so I basically had to rely on hitting \u201crandomize\u201d button over and over until I heard something reasonable\u2026 Though the \u201cWarp\u201d sound was customized by hand a bit \u2013 adding some falloff length, and vibrations\u2026\n\nAfter getting some sounds in the game, I decided to go all in and add some music. Especially since the exposition scene felt incomplete without it\u2026 so I opened Audiotool.com and\u2026 Well if I felt overwhelmed by BFXR - audiotool simply crushed my by the number of options there. But I was determined and after 5 hours of voluntary sound torture\u2026 I gave up. Basically rage-publishing the game without completing a list of smaller features, like custom UI panel graphics, additional UI information on ships, and so on.\n\nSummary:\n\nWhat went right:\n\n-\tThe workflow. Basic assets firs, scripts later seem to work well. Will definitely do this again.\n-\tThe background. The stars in the background required a custom shader, 5 materials, 3 prefabs and a script to randomize it! The stars were changing colours, slowly rotated and pulsed in size! And nobody noticed it, meaning that the background was\u2026 Perfect. \n-\tSound effects. Yes. It was hard to implement. And it took way more time than was necessary, but I did learn a few things and the sounds I picked didn\u2019t seem to invoke any negative reactions from players.\n-\tGame concept. Based on the feedback \u2013 the players enjoyed having a puzzle game and did in fact felt gratified for completing it once. So the intention was met.\n\nWhat went wrong.\n\n-\tChasing rabbits. \u2013 Not once, but at least 3 times I started chasing the stuff I wasn\u2019t qualified to produce, and that cost me a crapton of time and frustration.\n-\t\u2026 and that is pretty much it. Nothing else that I would call a failure.\n\nIn conclusion:\n\nI aggressively started playing other games and giving feedback \u2013 as soon as I realized that the rating is open, so within a couple of days my game had 20 ratings itself! Which is awesome!\n\nLooking forward for the next jam!\n","title":"Runaway Convoy Post Mortem.","wayback_source":[]}