PlatSCII Post Mortem and History
Hey. This is thanks for 100 votes :heart:
So everyone has probably done one of these by now, but it's my turn.
If you haven't played PlatSCII, here you go. Though you probably have, since all we do is spam ads.
It was 7:00 MDT, and I was at Boston Pizza, with @evan-juricic, when the theme was announced. I also lost 5$, since the food got there as soon as it was announced. With no Wifi at the restaurant, and no cellular to spare, I couldn't get the theme. That's when one of the people at my table goes on Twitter and sees the top post: "Combine two incompatible genres". We pulled out our napkins and started doodling. We came up with a puzzle shooter game, where you had a limited number of bullets, and had to do the angles to kill all the enemies with the least amount of bullets. @evan-juricic tells me that people probably don't want to do on-the-fly trigonometry when they are playing a game, so that idea was put on the back burner.
After we finish our food, I head outside and call up @connell. He pitches the text adventure platformer, and we are immediately hooked. We start throwing out as many ideas as we can, and ended up filling three napkins with doodles and ideas. And it wasn't even past 8:00. By the time I get home, @connell was discording me like crazy, and so were all my other friends. One of them had the idea for a Doom mod where you're Jesus throwing crosses at demons. We said no to the Christian Shooter. I had half a tile set done by 9:30 and said that was good, and went to sleep.
Next day, I get up at 7:00, watch some Pokemon, make some tea, and hop on my PC to finish that tile set. Once that's done, I get on discord to answer my 1500 messages. @connell had the typing mechanics done, and was asking me for 200 more assets. I worked for 3 hours until @evan-juricic finally woke up at 11:00, not having anything done. We send him our concept level and gameplay ideas and get him to work producing music.
By mid day we had the game working! You could jump, move left and right, and do combos! We were pretty ecstatic, and we begged @connell for an alpha version to try, but no dice. We kept working for the rest of the day until we had a nice point to stop. The next day, it was all wordage. Signs and signs. First, I made a start page, then credits, then commands, then the tutorial (Which was supposed to go to the first level). More and more signs, the level design. Finally. This was my golden hour. I pumped out level after level until @connell couldn't keep up! We eventually added four of my levels into the game.
Beginning of day three, I get up, hop in the shower, get dressed, grab my laptop, and head for school. When I get to class, I boot up Ubuntu and... Forgot to back up my project onto my laptop, so I can't work on it. CRAAAAAAAP. This happened to almost every other person on the Ludum Dare Discord. With lack of anything else, I try to learn GIMP in the 20 minutes of free time I had. I kinda did it? I still don't know how to resize my brush. None of that work made it onto my PC when I got home, so I was starting from scratch. After a couple of near death accidents involving me not saving on pyxel edit. One hour until submissions and we don't know how to add the executable image, or have the text box refocus after hitting enter. Half an hour later, after me clicking randomly in Unity, I find out we were in debug mode the ENTIRE TIME. I still feel like an idiot about that. The text box thing, we fixed that for each command in the level, but we ran out of time and didn't implement it into level changes, or start up.
One we submitted, I was literately sprinting around the block in joy! Our first Ludum Dare game was entered! We were already getting some very supportive comments! Thank you again for that!
After a couple days, publicity slowed down for PlatSCII, and we needed a post-jam version. But not a little one just for bug fixes, no no no. We needed a massive update with all new features and, what my Christian Shooter friend suggested, a level editor! We got to work.
During the period of not doing anything, I was watching Randomised User's videos on Ludum Dare games. I was scrolling through my Youtube suggested when his latest video caught my eye: We were in it. I started screaming at @connell through discord about it, as well at texting @evan-juricic furiously. we made it, the big time! We were pretty exited! We needed this post jam version to be great!
Just a couple days ago, we released it. @connell even commented on the video saying we released a post jam version! We were pretty exited. Most importantly, our publicity stunt was in action. We would have people make levels in the level editor, then feature them on our game page! It didn't work. Only one person made a level for us. Still, we have people making levels!
Now, for the post mortem:
Likes:
- We had our game working!
- It was actually fun!
- @connell and I actually finished a project while working together! We usually seperate on it by day five of a project, but this time the work was spread out evenly and we got it done! (Even though I would have liked to write a bit more code.)
Dislikes:
- The text box wasn't auto-focused when we changed levels.
- The plus(+) between characters feels weird to reach that far on the keyboard.
- There was one MASSIVE glitch in the jam version where if you beat the game, go back to menu, and replay the game, you wouldn't have to hit all the bombs to kill the boss, it would immediately prompt you to press d.
Every problem in the jam version was fixed in post, but now there are even more problems! I will never be satisfied.
All in all, this was an incredible experience and I can't wait for august! Same team, better game!
The future of this project:
There's a thing where I live called a Maker Fair, where all the junior high kids come and show off stuff they make. It could be music or it could be a cardboard suit, anything, really. We will make a PlatSCII 1.0.2 to show off!