{"author_link":"\/users\/aaron-nemoyten","author_name":"Aaron Nemoyten","author_uid":"aaron-nemoyten","comments":[],"epoch":1525243512,"event":"LD41","format":"md","ldjam_node_id":95775,"likes":2,"metadata":{"p_key":"114660","p_author":"Aaron Nemoyten","p_authorkey":"1079619","p_urlkey":"330620","p_title":"LD41 Postmortem Part 1: The Games I Didn't Make","p_cat":"LDJam ","p_event":"LD41","p_time":"1525243512","p_likes":"2","p_comments":"0","p_status":"WAYBACK","us_key":"1079619","us_name":"Aaron Nemoyten","us_username":"aaron-nemoyten","event_start":"1524182400","event_key":"72","event_name":"LD 41"},"node":{"_collation":{"body_sanitizer":"TextUtils::SanitizeHTML via existing importer","event":"LD41","removed_author":false},"_superparent":73256,"_trust":1,"author":79619,"body":"There are lots of posrmortems about games people made, but what about postmortems about games people DIDN'T make? Well, here is one such posrmortem! I originally wrote it for my blog - I'll put a link at the bottom of the article.\n\nLudum Dare 41 was my first game jam, and I was determined to produce a complete concept. I\u2019d read some horror stories about developers who overscoped their games and couldn\u2019t really finish them by the deadline, and I wanted to avoid that. Unfortunately, I also had a minor cold, so I knew my productivity was going to be hampered. Oh, and my wife was working night shifts at her job during the week, so our sleep schedules would both be thrown off. Hooray!\n\nOne of my design skills that I\u2019m most proud of is the ability to model game systems in my head and find problems quickly. This can be dangerous, of course, because if I use it during brainstorming it can hamper creativity by closing doors too quickly. But when brainstorming ideas for a game jam, it\u2019s actually perfect because I don\u2019t have a lot of time to work out design problems; I need a concept that I can for sure build, and that satisfies the criteria I laid out for myself.\n\nOh, it\u2019s also worth mentioning that I wanted to make a game for the Compo, which allows for 48 hours and has strict \u201cmake everything from scratch\u201d policies.\n\nSo, here were my criteria:\n\n- The idea needs to be simple enough to be a \u201ccomplete thought.\u201d\n- It needs to fit the theme \u2013 \u201cCombine two incompatible genres\u201d\n- I need to be able to execute thoroughly on both genres so that the concept doesn\u2019t feel like a cop-out\n- It needs to be something that I can pull off with my very limited art skills\n- It needs to be in Unity, because that\u2019s the engine I know best at the moment and I need to be productive\n- Preferred: I want to make something 3D.\n\nSo, let the brainstorming begin.\n\n# Idea 1: Roguelike Walking Simulator\n\nThis is the discarded idea that I spent the most time on. One of the things that appealed to me about it was that I could use my voice and build a narrative. I enjoy both voice acting and writing stories, so this would seem to be a good choice. I also enjoy weird narratives, and nothing could be weirder than a randomly generated narrative.\n\nAs I pursued this idea, I thought about how silly I could make it. I wanted to create a bunch of rooms, and then fill them randomly with objects. The objects would be silly too \u2013 my brainstorming list includes \u201cDisco ball, flan, cactus, suitcase, giant sausage, large orange, and dais.\u201d\n\nFinding an object would trigger narration tied to that object which would contribute to a larger story. But I would also make the game shorter than the length of the story, so that the only way to get the whole story would be to play through the game multiple times and try to figure out how all the elements fit together.\n\nBut then I started to have second thoughts. Roguelike implies more than just procedural content generation; It also implies things like permadeath, and an actual challenge. I considered changing the genre definitions to \u201cprocedural generated walking simulator,\u201d but procedural generation is a method, not a genre.\n\nI also considered adding some challenging elements or some kind of death mechanic, but nothing made sense with the rest of the concept.\n\nSo I moved on.\n\n# Idea 2: GUNBALL\n\nIt\u2019s a pinball shooter! The idea here is simple: Spacebar controls the flippers, mouse aims, mouse click shoots.\n\nAt first, this seemed like a perfect fit. Neither of those mechanics seem especially hard to build. Unity comes with enough built-in physics that I could probably make a pinball game pretty easily.\n\nBut\u2026 could I? In theory, maybe. But game physics are full of gotchas, and I don\u2019t have enough experience Unity\u2019s physics to confidently make a game based entirely on physics.\n\nThere\u2019s also the problem that a good pinball game actually has a lot of moving parts, and I\u2019ve never made one before. I would have to build out curves that would work properly with the physics to move the ball around, bumpers, and those things that hold the ball for a second and then spit it back out again\u2026\n\nOn top of that, I would need shooter mechanics.\n\nI also explored how a level would be designed. A single board may not be enough fun or enough gameplay; Multiple boards would require a lot of design work.\n\nAt that point, I couldn\u2019t see a way forward that wasn\u2019t altogether Way Too Much Work. And so, onto the next idea.\n\n# Ideas 3-X: Brain dump time!\n\nIt was after dinner \u2013 several hours had elapsed since the theme was announced, and I still didn\u2019t have an idea. At this point I decided to just start trying to metaphorically stick my finger down my brain\u2019s throat and vomit out as many ideas as possible.\n\nI thought, what have other people made with Unity? I remembered all those tiny horror games made with Unity that are basically \u201cdon\u2019t let the monster get you,\u201d and I thought \u2013 what if when the monster gets you, he asks you questions? Hey, it\u2019s a horror\/quiz game!\n\nBut then I remember that there\u2019s an entire game in one of the Jackbox Party Packs that is literally a horror quiz game, which made my idea feel less interesting. Also, I felt like if I was going to go to all the trouble of making a game, I should probably find a more interesting concept than \u201cavoid a thing and then take a quiz.\u201d\n\nNext up, a match 3 platformer! I\u2019m a huge fan of games like 10000000 and You Must Build a Boat (okay that\u2019s basically the same game) where there\u2019s a match 3 mechanic and action\/RPG mechanics. (I also think Puzzles and Dragons is utterly brilliant.) I considered a more deliberately frustrating, troll version of a match three game, where the match 3 part of the game is in the middle of a platforming level, and the player has to walk around the level picking up colored bubbles and dropping them on top of other ones to match.\n\nI just wasn\u2019t that excited about it though. It seemed more like a \u201chey look at this goofy concept\u201d than something that could actually be a fun game. I mean hey, a game that\u2019s basically 100 fetch-quests, right?\n\nAnd finally, a stealth physics game. I thought about taking two concepts that are completely opposed to each other: Games where you have to break as much stuff as possible (like Angry Birds) and games where you have to break as little stuff as possible (stealth). So, I imagined building structures out of physics objects and letting the player fling their stealth agent around, over, and through them while causing as little destruction as possible.\n\nBut that would present one of the same challenges that caused me to rule out pinball: I don\u2019t know enough about Unity physics to confidently build that game. And I know that Angry Birds, in order to offer as much destruction as possible at 60fps, has finely tuned physics code. And that\u2019s something I had neither the time nor the expertise to manage.\n\n# Final Idea: FPS Cooking Simulator\n\nThe pitch I wrote down on paper is simple: \u201cShoot enemies, push their corpses into stew.\u201d\n\nI wrote down the major tech requirements, and it was only two bullet points:\n\n- FPS controller\n- Camera facing sprite script\n\nIn truth, that wasn\u2019t actually the full list. I also realized I would need to learn and use something to build level geometry, so I picked ProBuilder (which is now officially a Unity product, and free).\n\nThere\u2019s also the fact that I\u2019ve wanted to build my own FPS for years, literally since I was in third grade and played Doom for the first time. My notebooks from then until age 12 are full of sketches of levels, monsters, and weapons for an imaginary FPS. (That wasn\u2019t my only imaginary game \u2013 there were many others!)\n\nAnd my plan as an indie developer is to eventually build a fully featured FPS inspired by Doom 2, Quake, etc.\n\nSo this felt like a good start.\n\nBefore I close out Part 1, let\u2019s see how the concept fits my requirements.\n\nThe idea is definitely simple enough to be a complete thought. The shooter mechanics can be simple, and the cooking just needs to be \u201cinclude the correct ingredients or you lose.\u201d\n\n- It fits the theme.\n- Given the simplicity of both genres (IE the requirements for a game to fit the genre are simple, unlike, say, Roguelike) I can execute on both fully enough\n- I can pull it off with my limited art skills by using billboarded sprites in a 3D world.\n- It can be done in Unity\n- It\u2019s 3D\n\nSo, at that point, I had chosen a concept I was 100% sure I wanted to execute on. In part 2, I\u2019ll explain how I did it, and where I made mistakes.\n\n----\n\nIf you enjoyed that and\/or want to see the two pictures of my brainstorming pages with my terrible handwriting, it's all on my site: http:\/\/www.aaronnemoyten.com\/2018\/04\/30\/ld41-postmortem-part-1-the-games-i-didnt-make\/","comments":0,"created":"2018-05-02T06:40:42Z","files":[],"files-timestamp":0,"id":95775,"love":2,"love-timestamp":"2018-05-02T09:37:49Z","meta":[],"modified":"2018-05-02T09:37:49Z","name":"LD41 Postmortem Part 1: The Games I Didn't Make","node-timestamp":"2018-05-02T06:45:12Z","parent":86073,"parents":[1,5,9,73256,86073],"path":"\/events\/ludum-dare\/41\/monster-stew\/ld41-postmortem-part-1-the-games-i-didnt-make","published":"2018-05-02T06:45:12Z","scope":"public","slug":"ld41-postmortem-part-1-the-games-i-didnt-make","subsubtype":"","subtype":"","type":"post","version":283182},"node_metadata":{"n_key":"95775","n_urlkey":"330620","n_parent":"86073","n_path":"\/events\/ludum-dare\/41\/monster-stew\/ld41-postmortem-part-1-the-games-i-didnt-make","n_slug":"ld41-postmortem-part-1-the-games","n_type":"post","n_subtype":"","n_subsubtype":"","n_author":"79619","n_created":"1525243242","n_modified":"1525253869","n_version":"283182","n_status":"WAYBACK"},"source_url":"https:\/\/ldjam.com\/events\/ludum-dare\/41\/monster-stew\/ld41-postmortem-part-1-the-games-i-didnt-make","text":"There are lots of posrmortems about games people made, but what about postmortems about games people DIDN'T make? Well, here is one such posrmortem! I originally wrote it for my blog - I'll put a link at the bottom of the article.\n\nLudum Dare 41 was my first game jam, and I was determined to produce a complete concept. I\u2019d read some horror stories about developers who overscoped their games and couldn\u2019t really finish them by the deadline, and I wanted to avoid that. Unfortunately, I also had a minor cold, so I knew my productivity was going to be hampered. Oh, and my wife was working night shifts at her job during the week, so our sleep schedules would both be thrown off. Hooray!\n\nOne of my design skills that I\u2019m most proud of is the ability to model game systems in my head and find problems quickly. This can be dangerous, of course, because if I use it during brainstorming it can hamper creativity by closing doors too quickly. But when brainstorming ideas for a game jam, it\u2019s actually perfect because I don\u2019t have a lot of time to work out design problems; I need a concept that I can for sure build, and that satisfies the criteria I laid out for myself.\n\nOh, it\u2019s also worth mentioning that I wanted to make a game for the Compo, which allows for 48 hours and has strict \u201cmake everything from scratch\u201d policies.\n\nSo, here were my criteria:\n\n- The idea needs to be simple enough to be a \u201ccomplete thought.\u201d\n- It needs to fit the theme \u2013 \u201cCombine two incompatible genres\u201d\n- I need to be able to execute thoroughly on both genres so that the concept doesn\u2019t feel like a cop-out\n- It needs to be something that I can pull off with my very limited art skills\n- It needs to be in Unity, because that\u2019s the engine I know best at the moment and I need to be productive\n- Preferred: I want to make something 3D.\n\nSo, let the brainstorming begin.\n\n# Idea 1: Roguelike Walking Simulator\n\nThis is the discarded idea that I spent the most time on. One of the things that appealed to me about it was that I could use my voice and build a narrative. I enjoy both voice acting and writing stories, so this would seem to be a good choice. I also enjoy weird narratives, and nothing could be weirder than a randomly generated narrative.\n\nAs I pursued this idea, I thought about how silly I could make it. I wanted to create a bunch of rooms, and then fill them randomly with objects. The objects would be silly too \u2013 my brainstorming list includes \u201cDisco ball, flan, cactus, suitcase, giant sausage, large orange, and dais.\u201d\n\nFinding an object would trigger narration tied to that object which would contribute to a larger story. But I would also make the game shorter than the length of the story, so that the only way to get the whole story would be to play through the game multiple times and try to figure out how all the elements fit together.\n\nBut then I started to have second thoughts. Roguelike implies more than just procedural content generation; It also implies things like permadeath, and an actual challenge. I considered changing the genre definitions to \u201cprocedural generated walking simulator,\u201d but procedural generation is a method, not a genre.\n\nI also considered adding some challenging elements or some kind of death mechanic, but nothing made sense with the rest of the concept.\n\nSo I moved on.\n\n# Idea 2: GUNBALL\n\nIt\u2019s a pinball shooter! The idea here is simple: Spacebar controls the flippers, mouse aims, mouse click shoots.\n\nAt first, this seemed like a perfect fit. Neither of those mechanics seem especially hard to build. Unity comes with enough built-in physics that I could probably make a pinball game pretty easily.\n\nBut\u2026 could I? In theory, maybe. But game physics are full of gotchas, and I don\u2019t have enough experience Unity\u2019s physics to confidently make a game based entirely on physics.\n\nThere\u2019s also the problem that a good pinball game actually has a lot of moving parts, and I\u2019ve never made one before. I would have to build out curves that would work properly with the physics to move the ball around, bumpers, and those things that hold the ball for a second and then spit it back out again\u2026\n\nOn top of that, I would need shooter mechanics.\n\nI also explored how a level would be designed. A single board may not be enough fun or enough gameplay; Multiple boards would require a lot of design work.\n\nAt that point, I couldn\u2019t see a way forward that wasn\u2019t altogether Way Too Much Work. And so, onto the next idea.\n\n# Ideas 3-X: Brain dump time!\n\nIt was after dinner \u2013 several hours had elapsed since the theme was announced, and I still didn\u2019t have an idea. At this point I decided to just start trying to metaphorically stick my finger down my brain\u2019s throat and vomit out as many ideas as possible.\n\nI thought, what have other people made with Unity? I remembered all those tiny horror games made with Unity that are basically \u201cdon\u2019t let the monster get you,\u201d and I thought \u2013 what if when the monster gets you, he asks you questions? Hey, it\u2019s a horror\/quiz game!\n\nBut then I remember that there\u2019s an entire game in one of the Jackbox Party Packs that is literally a horror quiz game, which made my idea feel less interesting. Also, I felt like if I was going to go to all the trouble of making a game, I should probably find a more interesting concept than \u201cavoid a thing and then take a quiz.\u201d\n\nNext up, a match 3 platformer! I\u2019m a huge fan of games like 10000000 and You Must Build a Boat (okay that\u2019s basically the same game) where there\u2019s a match 3 mechanic and action\/RPG mechanics. (I also think Puzzles and Dragons is utterly brilliant.) I considered a more deliberately frustrating, troll version of a match three game, where the match 3 part of the game is in the middle of a platforming level, and the player has to walk around the level picking up colored bubbles and dropping them on top of other ones to match.\n\nI just wasn\u2019t that excited about it though. It seemed more like a \u201chey look at this goofy concept\u201d than something that could actually be a fun game. I mean hey, a game that\u2019s basically 100 fetch-quests, right?\n\nAnd finally, a stealth physics game. I thought about taking two concepts that are completely opposed to each other: Games where you have to break as much stuff as possible (like Angry Birds) and games where you have to break as little stuff as possible (stealth). So, I imagined building structures out of physics objects and letting the player fling their stealth agent around, over, and through them while causing as little destruction as possible.\n\nBut that would present one of the same challenges that caused me to rule out pinball: I don\u2019t know enough about Unity physics to confidently build that game. And I know that Angry Birds, in order to offer as much destruction as possible at 60fps, has finely tuned physics code. And that\u2019s something I had neither the time nor the expertise to manage.\n\n# Final Idea: FPS Cooking Simulator\n\nThe pitch I wrote down on paper is simple: \u201cShoot enemies, push their corpses into stew.\u201d\n\nI wrote down the major tech requirements, and it was only two bullet points:\n\n- FPS controller\n- Camera facing sprite script\n\nIn truth, that wasn\u2019t actually the full list. I also realized I would need to learn and use something to build level geometry, so I picked ProBuilder (which is now officially a Unity product, and free).\n\nThere\u2019s also the fact that I\u2019ve wanted to build my own FPS for years, literally since I was in third grade and played Doom for the first time. My notebooks from then until age 12 are full of sketches of levels, monsters, and weapons for an imaginary FPS. (That wasn\u2019t my only imaginary game \u2013 there were many others!)\n\nAnd my plan as an indie developer is to eventually build a fully featured FPS inspired by Doom 2, Quake, etc.\n\nSo this felt like a good start.\n\nBefore I close out Part 1, let\u2019s see how the concept fits my requirements.\n\nThe idea is definitely simple enough to be a complete thought. The shooter mechanics can be simple, and the cooking just needs to be \u201cinclude the correct ingredients or you lose.\u201d\n\n- It fits the theme.\n- Given the simplicity of both genres (IE the requirements for a game to fit the genre are simple, unlike, say, Roguelike) I can execute on both fully enough\n- I can pull it off with my limited art skills by using billboarded sprites in a 3D world.\n- It can be done in Unity\n- It\u2019s 3D\n\nSo, at that point, I had chosen a concept I was 100% sure I wanted to execute on. In part 2, I\u2019ll explain how I did it, and where I made mistakes.\n\n----\n\nIf you enjoyed that and\/or want to see the two pictures of my brainstorming pages with my terrible handwriting, it's all on my site: http:\/\/www.aaronnemoyten.com\/2018\/04\/30\/ld41-postmortem-part-1-the-games-i-didnt-make\/","title":"LD41 Postmortem Part 1: The Games I Didn't Make","wayback_source":[]}