{"author_link":"\/users\/eryph","author_name":"Eryph","author_uid":"eryph","comments":[],"epoch":1512861800,"event":"LD40","format":"md","ldjam_node_id":70443,"likes":2,"metadata":{"p_key":"106957","p_author":"Eryph","p_authorkey":"1054701","p_urlkey":"322767","p_title":"The Darkest Light : Let's talk about design choices","p_cat":"LDJam ","p_event":"LD40","p_time":"1512861800","p_likes":"2","p_comments":"0","p_status":"WAYBACK","us_key":"1054701","us_name":"Eryph","us_username":"eryph","event_start":"1512086400","event_key":"70","event_name":"LD 40"},"node":{"_collation":{"body_sanitizer":"TextUtils::SanitizeHTML via existing importer","event":"LD40","removed_author":false},"_superparent":49883,"_trust":3,"author":54701,"body":"Hey jammers !\n------------------------------------------\n\nFirst of all, thank you for all your feedbacks ! As a junior french dev team, seeing that you enjoyed our little game means the world for us !\n\nAfter 50+ ratings and 30+ feedbacks, a pattern is designing itself.\nSo we want to come back and talk with you about our design choices (good or bad).\n\n![cover1.jpg](\/\/\/raw\/da5\/d\/z\/e5b4.jpg)\n\n**Disclaimer :**\n\nThe game is an atmospheric horror game, by reading the next part of the post you may spoil yourself the enemy behaviour, the light up \/ light down mechanic, and some other things.\nThe post is not really a post-mortem, it's more a \"let's talk\", and we are looking for feedbacks and advices ;)\n\nSo we strongly recommand to play the game : https:\/\/ldjam.com\/events\/ludum-dare\/40\/the-darkest-light\n\n-------------------------------------------------------------\n**The light mechanic :**\n\n\"The character has a light which is his range of vision. He can light down and light up. The more light he has, the more enemies will run at him. The goal is to get to the exit of the maze. The game must push players to light up, in order to have the \"the more you have, the worse it is\" effect.\"\nThat was the original 5AM Saturday concept.\n\nNext to it, we thought that a constantly decreasing light range, was more stressful for the player, making him light up at a constant rate, creating a \"routine\" that could be disturbed by enemies and Level Design.\n\nIn the level we put door activating braseros which must be triggered by light (sticking with the \"light up\" mechanic).\nWe used this props to create fear and surprise. In fact, the player must think about the interactable object before thinking about ghosts placed at the exact same range.\nCons : The game is short, but this kind of surprise effect could be totally trivial if used too much.\n\nFeedbacks on the mechanic : Good ! It seems to create the stress and surprise effect as intended.\n\n![dakrest lit screen.png](\/\/\/raw\/da5\/d\/z\/e5b5.png)\n\n**The ghost behaviour :**\n\nThe enemies are ghosts who are able to pass through walls. This mechanic allowed us to place them outside the character path, making them instanly more powerfull than the character.\nWe decided to let them pass through walls to link this with le light mechanic : the only place to hide is darkness. You can't loose them passing behind a wall, or hiding in a room corner.\n\nFeedbacks : Good ! Also seems  to work as intended. But a bit frustrating sometimes, where your light is really low, and they jump at you so fast you are not able te react and die.\nBalancing the ghost spotting you at long range, and those sprotting you ate close range is a little bit tricky.\n\nPotential fix : We could slow the reaction time of the \"close spawning\" ghosts without affecting the others.\nThanks to @somethinboutgames ;)\n\n**The in game text**\nAt the start of the game, some floating text will appear at the bottom of the screen, explaining in a nebular way the objectives and the mechanic.\n\nFeedbacks : some player could be annoyed by the \"not mood related\" text, explaining a mechanic that they already had figured out.\nThis was a dilemma during the development.\nWe let the text, deciding that the primary goal was that EVERYONE could play it, and EVERYONE could understand the mechanic, knowing that veteran and very smart player would understand it immedialty, and could be annoyed by this.\n\nA solution would be to let it as an option, or blending it to the assest (text directly written on ground or walls)\n\n**The character movement system :**\n\nThe character controller is heavy : up arrow to move forward, down arrow to move -forward, left\/right to rotate.\nThe camera follows the character's forward, and it was designed to loose the player in the maze. If the camera was not rotating with the player, it could be much easier to understand the Level Design and get to the end.\n\nIt seems to be the major frustration though.\n\nWe designed it that way to make the character weak, and to create tension.\nUnfortunalty it seems we did a little too much on that...\n\n![menu_nouvelle_vague.jpg](\/\/\/raw\/da5\/d\/z\/e5b8.jpg)\n\nWe'll try to improve this mechanic, maybe allowing strafe, but it will be hard to change it without loosing the tension it 's creating or breaking the ghost balance... If you have ideas, we are totally opened to it ! \n\n**The bugs and the unfinished features :**\n\n-The animations #Not Fixed#\n\nThe lacking animations seems to be the major problem of the game, and it's a problem which is planned to be fixed ;)\n\n-The sound mixing #Fixed#\n\nSome sounds (the ghost's screems) seemed to be not well mixed, this is now fixed !\n\n-The light shader\n\nThis one was extremly tricky : the field of view must trigger braseros and the ghosts. We are not really familiar with shader, so we did what we could. The solution we found saldy creates some weird artefact when player's light collides with brasero's light.\nWe'll try to improve this mechanic later.\n\nDon't hesitate to let us know in the comment section if you have feedbacks and ideas to improve this little interactable piece of software we did ;)\n\nAnd thank you again for all your feedbacks !\n\nWe will soon upload MACOS and Linux builds !","comments":1,"comments-timestamp":"2017-12-10T22:10:04Z","created":"2017-12-09T11:11:11Z","files":[],"files-timestamp":0,"id":70443,"love":2,"love-timestamp":"2017-12-10T21:06:23Z","meta":[],"modified":"2017-12-10T22:10:04Z","name":"The Darkest Light : Let's talk about design choices","node-timestamp":"2017-12-09T23:23:20Z","parent":53321,"parents":[1,5,9,49883,53321],"path":"\/events\/ludum-dare\/40\/the-darkest-light\/the-darkest-light-lets-talk-about-design-choices","published":"2017-12-09T23:23:20Z","scope":"public","slug":"the-darkest-light-lets-talk-about-design-choices","subsubtype":"","subtype":"","type":"post","version":206691},"node_metadata":{"n_key":"70443","n_urlkey":"322767","n_parent":"53321","n_path":"\/events\/ludum-dare\/40\/the-darkest-light\/the-darkest-light-lets-talk-about-design-choices","n_slug":"the-darkest-light-lets-talk-abou","n_type":"post","n_subtype":"","n_subsubtype":"","n_author":"54701","n_created":"1512817871","n_modified":"1512943804","n_version":"206691","n_status":"WAYBACK"},"source_url":"https:\/\/ldjam.com\/events\/ludum-dare\/40\/the-darkest-light\/the-darkest-light-lets-talk-about-design-choices","text":"Hey jammers !\n------------------------------------------\n\nFirst of all, thank you for all your feedbacks ! As a junior french dev team, seeing that you enjoyed our little game means the world for us !\n\nAfter 50+ ratings and 30+ feedbacks, a pattern is designing itself.\nSo we want to come back and talk with you about our design choices (good or bad).\n\n![cover1.jpg](\/\/\/raw\/da5\/d\/z\/e5b4.jpg)\n\n**Disclaimer :**\n\nThe game is an atmospheric horror game, by reading the next part of the post you may spoil yourself the enemy behaviour, the light up \/ light down mechanic, and some other things.\nThe post is not really a post-mortem, it's more a \"let's talk\", and we are looking for feedbacks and advices ;)\n\nSo we strongly recommand to play the game : https:\/\/ldjam.com\/events\/ludum-dare\/40\/the-darkest-light\n\n-------------------------------------------------------------\n**The light mechanic :**\n\n\"The character has a light which is his range of vision. He can light down and light up. The more light he has, the more enemies will run at him. The goal is to get to the exit of the maze. The game must push players to light up, in order to have the \"the more you have, the worse it is\" effect.\"\nThat was the original 5AM Saturday concept.\n\nNext to it, we thought that a constantly decreasing light range, was more stressful for the player, making him light up at a constant rate, creating a \"routine\" that could be disturbed by enemies and Level Design.\n\nIn the level we put door activating braseros which must be triggered by light (sticking with the \"light up\" mechanic).\nWe used this props to create fear and surprise. In fact, the player must think about the interactable object before thinking about ghosts placed at the exact same range.\nCons : The game is short, but this kind of surprise effect could be totally trivial if used too much.\n\nFeedbacks on the mechanic : Good ! It seems to create the stress and surprise effect as intended.\n\n![dakrest lit screen.png](\/\/\/raw\/da5\/d\/z\/e5b5.png)\n\n**The ghost behaviour :**\n\nThe enemies are ghosts who are able to pass through walls. This mechanic allowed us to place them outside the character path, making them instanly more powerfull than the character.\nWe decided to let them pass through walls to link this with le light mechanic : the only place to hide is darkness. You can't loose them passing behind a wall, or hiding in a room corner.\n\nFeedbacks : Good ! Also seems  to work as intended. But a bit frustrating sometimes, where your light is really low, and they jump at you so fast you are not able te react and die.\nBalancing the ghost spotting you at long range, and those sprotting you ate close range is a little bit tricky.\n\nPotential fix : We could slow the reaction time of the \"close spawning\" ghosts without affecting the others.\nThanks to @somethinboutgames ;)\n\n**The in game text**\nAt the start of the game, some floating text will appear at the bottom of the screen, explaining in a nebular way the objectives and the mechanic.\n\nFeedbacks : some player could be annoyed by the \"not mood related\" text, explaining a mechanic that they already had figured out.\nThis was a dilemma during the development.\nWe let the text, deciding that the primary goal was that EVERYONE could play it, and EVERYONE could understand the mechanic, knowing that veteran and very smart player would understand it immedialty, and could be annoyed by this.\n\nA solution would be to let it as an option, or blending it to the assest (text directly written on ground or walls)\n\n**The character movement system :**\n\nThe character controller is heavy : up arrow to move forward, down arrow to move -forward, left\/right to rotate.\nThe camera follows the character's forward, and it was designed to loose the player in the maze. If the camera was not rotating with the player, it could be much easier to understand the Level Design and get to the end.\n\nIt seems to be the major frustration though.\n\nWe designed it that way to make the character weak, and to create tension.\nUnfortunalty it seems we did a little too much on that...\n\n![menu_nouvelle_vague.jpg](\/\/\/raw\/da5\/d\/z\/e5b8.jpg)\n\nWe'll try to improve this mechanic, maybe allowing strafe, but it will be hard to change it without loosing the tension it 's creating or breaking the ghost balance... If you have ideas, we are totally opened to it ! \n\n**The bugs and the unfinished features :**\n\n-The animations #Not Fixed#\n\nThe lacking animations seems to be the major problem of the game, and it's a problem which is planned to be fixed ;)\n\n-The sound mixing #Fixed#\n\nSome sounds (the ghost's screems) seemed to be not well mixed, this is now fixed !\n\n-The light shader\n\nThis one was extremly tricky : the field of view must trigger braseros and the ghosts. We are not really familiar with shader, so we did what we could. The solution we found saldy creates some weird artefact when player's light collides with brasero's light.\nWe'll try to improve this mechanic later.\n\nDon't hesitate to let us know in the comment section if you have feedbacks and ideas to improve this little interactable piece of software we did ;)\n\nAnd thank you again for all your feedbacks !\n\nWe will soon upload MACOS and Linux builds !","title":"The Darkest Light : Let's talk about design choices","wayback_source":[]}