{"author_link":"\/users\/matank","author_name":"Matank","author_uid":"matank","comments":[],"epoch":1536301412,"event":"LD42","format":"md","ldjam_node_id":119467,"likes":11,"metadata":{"p_key":"122049","p_author":"Matank","p_authorkey":"1101302","p_urlkey":"338084","p_title":"Pyramidion: Results and Mini Post Mortem","p_cat":"LDJam ","p_event":"LD42","p_time":"1536301412","p_likes":"11","p_comments":"0","p_status":"WAYBACK","us_key":"1101302","us_name":"Matank","us_username":"matank","event_start":"1533859200","event_key":"73","event_name":"LD 42"},"node":{"_collation":{"body_sanitizer":"TextUtils::SanitizeHTML via existing importer","event":"LD42","removed_author":false},"_superparent":97793,"_trust":3,"author":101302,"body":"# How I spent my time\n\nThe first 2 hours were spent coming up with an idea. I had a few different ideas, including a tetris game where bricks expand after every turn (leaving you out of space), and an inventory management game where you need to fit items in a limited inventory. I thought all of these ideas are super original, but of course I later saw similar things implemented again and again in different LD games :)\n(to be honest, many of these implementations were much more original than what I would come up with).\n\nEventually, I brainstormed with my wife and came to the idea of going up the pyramid, trying to avoid creatures running around. Here\u2019s the original design drawing:\n![design_small.jpg](\/\/\/raw\/6bb\/81\/z\/1ab71.jpg)\n\nI then started with drawing the main character. I\u2019m not an artist, so this took me a long time, and the results weren\u2019t very good. Here is my original pencil drawing:\n![man_drawing_small.jpg](\/\/\/raw\/6bb\/81\/z\/1ab72.jpg)\n\n\nI \u201cscanned\u201d the drawing (by taking a picture with my cell phone), then colored over it with gimp:\n\n![player.png](\/\/\/raw\/6bb\/81\/z\/1ab6b.png)\n\nAnd then animated the character using aseprite:\n![walk_anim.gif](\/\/\/raw\/6bb\/81\/z\/1ab6c.gif)\n\n\nObviously it\u2019s very amateurish (and the hands move all wrong!), but I think given what a noob I am at this kind of thing, in my opinion it came out rather nice.\n\nHowever, this took a very long time. 6 hours after the start, I basically had the player and snake characters animated, and had them walking around in unity:\n![walk_animations.gif](\/\/\/raw\/6bb\/81\/z\/1ab6d.gif)\n\n\nThe next 4 hours, I coded the simple AI for the snake, and started playing around with trying to avoid the snakes:\n![fight.gif](\/\/\/raw\/6bb\/81\/z\/1ab6e.gif)\n\n\nEventually, I spent most of Saturday trying to polish the AI to make the snakes fun to avoid in different room sizes. This was eventually what probably took most time in developing my game. I wrote [an entire post](https:\/\/ldjam.com\/events\/ludum-dare\/42\/pyramidion\/some-thoughts-about-difficulty-progression-in-pyramidion) about this process so I\u2019ll keep it short here. I\u2019ll just say that one thing I learned - while it seemed very tedious while I was doing it, this was eventually the most rewarding work. It was amazing watching people have fun playing my game after spending so much time making sure it\u2019s actually fun.\n\nSunday was spent mostly on polishing, adding things that are not essential to gameplay, such as adding all the hieroglyphics and wall painting, the Horus character and the dialog at the start of the game, the end game, and a few of the animations.\n\n![animated.gif](\/\/\/raw\/6bb\/81\/z\/1ab6f.gif)\n\nSunday night was then spent on making easy mode, which was surprisingly simple to do (since it didn\u2019t contain any new elements, except for different snake AIs which was just a bunch of tweaks of already exposed variables in the AI script).\n\nMonday morning was spent on drawing and programming the hawk character and making \/ balancing hard mode.\n\n# Results\n\n![Capture.PNG](\/\/\/raw\/6bb\/81\/z\/1ab70.png)\n\nIf I understand correctly there were about 1300 games, so that puts me in the top 35% which I\u2019m pretty happy about for my first attempt at Ludum Dare! Also, I\u2019ve had a game breaking bug (that made the game unplayably slow for around a fourth of the players) which I discovered and fixed only around 40 hours after my submission, so I imagine it also affected my score.\n\nOne thing that surprised me is the relatively high \u201cmood\u201d rating. I\u2019m not sure what mood actually means - I thought only sad or scary games get a good mood score. I guess what happens is that the sad\/scary games get the top results and the others just get assigned to a random score and I got lucky :)\n\nAlternatively, maybe people scored it high because of the \u201cancient egyptian drawings\u201d theme I\u2019ve made for my game.\n\n# My conclusions\n\n* I need to work on my method for creating art assets for the game. This took very long for me and ended up eating a very large portion of my time. I think I could get at least twice as fast, allowing me to create many more animations and characters for my game.\n* Gameplay programming is really fun, probably the most rewarding of all the work I\u2019ve done in the jam! It\u2019s awesome watching people playing my game and commenting about all the design decisions I\u2019ve made.\n* Watching streamers play the game was one of the most insightful things for me this jam. Next time I\u2019m going to take at least one more day off from work to be able to watch and interacts with a few streams.\n\nThat's it. Had a lot of fun participating in Ludum Dare! Can't wait for the next one. Thank you to everyone who played my game! I'm still happy for more feedback so if you're feeling bored and have a spare 5 minutes, please play my game and let me know what you think.","comments":4,"comments-timestamp":"2018-09-07T17:26:43Z","created":"2018-09-07T06:11:39Z","files":[],"files-timestamp":0,"id":119467,"love":11,"love-timestamp":"2018-11-18T15:28:52Z","meta":[],"modified":"2018-11-18T15:28:52Z","name":"Pyramidion: Results and Mini Post Mortem","node-timestamp":"2018-09-07T06:23:32Z","parent":101307,"parents":[1,5,9,97793,101307],"path":"\/events\/ludum-dare\/42\/pyramidion\/pyramidion-results-and-mini-post-mortem","published":"2018-09-07T06:23:32Z","scope":"public","slug":"pyramidion-results-and-mini-post-mortem","subsubtype":"","subtype":"","type":"post","version":358103},"node_metadata":{"n_key":"119467","n_urlkey":"338084","n_parent":"101307","n_path":"\/events\/ludum-dare\/42\/pyramidion\/pyramidion-results-and-mini-post-mortem","n_slug":"pyramidion-results-and-mini-post","n_type":"post","n_subtype":"","n_subsubtype":"","n_author":"101302","n_created":"1536300699","n_modified":"1542554932","n_version":"358103","n_status":"WAYBACK"},"source_url":"https:\/\/ldjam.com\/events\/ludum-dare\/42\/pyramidion\/pyramidion-results-and-mini-post-mortem","text":"# How I spent my time\n\nThe first 2 hours were spent coming up with an idea. I had a few different ideas, including a tetris game where bricks expand after every turn (leaving you out of space), and an inventory management game where you need to fit items in a limited inventory. I thought all of these ideas are super original, but of course I later saw similar things implemented again and again in different LD games :)\n(to be honest, many of these implementations were much more original than what I would come up with).\n\nEventually, I brainstormed with my wife and came to the idea of going up the pyramid, trying to avoid creatures running around. Here\u2019s the original design drawing:\n![design_small.jpg](\/\/\/raw\/6bb\/81\/z\/1ab71.jpg)\n\nI then started with drawing the main character. I\u2019m not an artist, so this took me a long time, and the results weren\u2019t very good. Here is my original pencil drawing:\n![man_drawing_small.jpg](\/\/\/raw\/6bb\/81\/z\/1ab72.jpg)\n\n\nI \u201cscanned\u201d the drawing (by taking a picture with my cell phone), then colored over it with gimp:\n\n![player.png](\/\/\/raw\/6bb\/81\/z\/1ab6b.png)\n\nAnd then animated the character using aseprite:\n![walk_anim.gif](\/\/\/raw\/6bb\/81\/z\/1ab6c.gif)\n\n\nObviously it\u2019s very amateurish (and the hands move all wrong!), but I think given what a noob I am at this kind of thing, in my opinion it came out rather nice.\n\nHowever, this took a very long time. 6 hours after the start, I basically had the player and snake characters animated, and had them walking around in unity:\n![walk_animations.gif](\/\/\/raw\/6bb\/81\/z\/1ab6d.gif)\n\n\nThe next 4 hours, I coded the simple AI for the snake, and started playing around with trying to avoid the snakes:\n![fight.gif](\/\/\/raw\/6bb\/81\/z\/1ab6e.gif)\n\n\nEventually, I spent most of Saturday trying to polish the AI to make the snakes fun to avoid in different room sizes. This was eventually what probably took most time in developing my game. I wrote [an entire post](https:\/\/ldjam.com\/events\/ludum-dare\/42\/pyramidion\/some-thoughts-about-difficulty-progression-in-pyramidion) about this process so I\u2019ll keep it short here. I\u2019ll just say that one thing I learned - while it seemed very tedious while I was doing it, this was eventually the most rewarding work. It was amazing watching people have fun playing my game after spending so much time making sure it\u2019s actually fun.\n\nSunday was spent mostly on polishing, adding things that are not essential to gameplay, such as adding all the hieroglyphics and wall painting, the Horus character and the dialog at the start of the game, the end game, and a few of the animations.\n\n![animated.gif](\/\/\/raw\/6bb\/81\/z\/1ab6f.gif)\n\nSunday night was then spent on making easy mode, which was surprisingly simple to do (since it didn\u2019t contain any new elements, except for different snake AIs which was just a bunch of tweaks of already exposed variables in the AI script).\n\nMonday morning was spent on drawing and programming the hawk character and making \/ balancing hard mode.\n\n# Results\n\n![Capture.PNG](\/\/\/raw\/6bb\/81\/z\/1ab70.png)\n\nIf I understand correctly there were about 1300 games, so that puts me in the top 35% which I\u2019m pretty happy about for my first attempt at Ludum Dare! Also, I\u2019ve had a game breaking bug (that made the game unplayably slow for around a fourth of the players) which I discovered and fixed only around 40 hours after my submission, so I imagine it also affected my score.\n\nOne thing that surprised me is the relatively high \u201cmood\u201d rating. I\u2019m not sure what mood actually means - I thought only sad or scary games get a good mood score. I guess what happens is that the sad\/scary games get the top results and the others just get assigned to a random score and I got lucky :)\n\nAlternatively, maybe people scored it high because of the \u201cancient egyptian drawings\u201d theme I\u2019ve made for my game.\n\n# My conclusions\n\n* I need to work on my method for creating art assets for the game. This took very long for me and ended up eating a very large portion of my time. I think I could get at least twice as fast, allowing me to create many more animations and characters for my game.\n* Gameplay programming is really fun, probably the most rewarding of all the work I\u2019ve done in the jam! It\u2019s awesome watching people playing my game and commenting about all the design decisions I\u2019ve made.\n* Watching streamers play the game was one of the most insightful things for me this jam. Next time I\u2019m going to take at least one more day off from work to be able to watch and interacts with a few streams.\n\nThat's it. Had a lot of fun participating in Ludum Dare! Can't wait for the next one. Thank you to everyone who played my game! I'm still happy for more feedback so if you're feeling bored and have a spare 5 minutes, please play my game and let me know what you think.","title":"Pyramidion: Results and Mini Post Mortem","wayback_source":[]}