{"author_name":"CosmicAdventureSquad","cat":"LD #33","comments":[],"epoch":1442337240,"likes":0,"metadata":{"p_key":"12885","p_author":"CosmicAdventureSquad","p_authorkey":"22946","p_urlkey":"48137","p_title":"Super Sea Serpent Simulator \u2014 Post-Mortem Part 2!","p_cat":"LD #33","p_event":"LD33","p_time":"1442337240","p_likes":"0","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"22946","us_name":"CosmicAdventureSquad","us_username":"cosmicadventuresquad","event_start":"1440115200","event_key":"29","event_name":"LD33"},"text":"

We’re Cosmic Adventure Squad, and we made Super Sea Serpent Simulator<\/a> during LD 33!<\/p>\n

\"Super<\/a><\/p>\n

Click above to\u00a0play!<\/p>\n

This part 2 of the post-mortem will be from the point of view of one\u00a0of the\u00a0regulars on the team: Tenlki! If you want to hear from Rosypenguin and Stregawolf, part 1 is here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

—————————————————————————-<\/p>\n

<\/i>Hi, I\u2019m Tenlki<\/a>\u00a0(or as some will know me from elsewhere – just Tenki). I\u2019ve been casually helping out with Ludum Dare and Global Game Jam for a while, not really keeping count anymore, haha. This was pretty much my first full Unity project.<\/span><\/p>\n

Role(s):\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

This time around, pretty much everything audio-related went to me – I was originally tasked with making the music (and implied, the SFX), but as time went on, I had to pick up and code the audio system.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What went well: <\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m actually pretty happy with how everything turned out!<\/span><\/p>\n

I spent Friday night\/Saturday morning listening to different sea shanties from games and other sources, to get a better feel of what kind of instruments and well, how to write a song with the feel we want. Threw in a first draft on Saturday night, got feedback (\u201cit sounds piratey- can we make it sound more \u2018monster\u2019?\u201d) and added parts in to make it fit. Sunday night, came up with the idea to\u00a0split the title motif and create the peace theme and a layered\u00a0battle theme<\/a>\u00a0(my personal favorite ‘variation’ of the soundtrack).<\/span><\/p>\n

I got (or had<\/em>) to do\u00a0a lot of things for the first time: I\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

– Updated FL Studio the first night in<\/strong> – the interface is kind of different!
\n <\/span>– Recorded a lot more \u201clive-played\u201d music with keyboard<\/strong> instead of clicking in notes the whole time as I\u2019d previously done. That\u2019s me actually playing piano<\/em>! (..and kind of the other instruments, just reskinned the sounds lol)
\n <\/span>– Accidentally upgraded to Windows 10 a few days before<\/strong>
\n <\/span>– Never wrote music quite in the style\/genre that we ended with<\/strong>
\n <\/span>– Didn\u2019t have significant experience with Unity and Github<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

…but all things considered (…and more on the \u201call things considered\u201d later), I think it all came together really well!<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What could be improved:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, I think everyone else was actually around the same area and meeting up locally, but I live across the country, so everything together, I was kind of kept out of the loop most of the time. Up until around Sunday\u00a0evening when we submitted, all I had to work with were some screenshots, some minor descriptions of the game and what mood or assets we needed, so I was kind of shooting in the dark as far as how the game itself was looking and feeling.<\/span><\/p>\n

On Sunday night, I found out we didn\u2019t actually have an audio system and I was needed to code it in and hook in all the sounds. I hadn\u2019t really gotten my hands too dirty in Unity before so I kinda drove straight into it with the time limit coming up (after forcing myself through an <\/span>ugh<\/span><\/i> video tutorial<\/b>). I did a bunch of improvisation in that last bit and came up with having an audio mixer, battle\/peace theme, figured out some nice places to trigger sounds (and improvised the sounds themselves) and got everything in. If anything, I kinda wanted a different theme in-game than the title screen (though, title \u201cscreen\u201d was more of a misunderstanding on my part), but ended up running variations instead. I think it worked out ok.<\/span><\/p>\n

I did actually write a game over theme<\/a>\u00a0but I think silence did the job better.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What you will do different next time:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Really, I kinda liked having that bit of pressure forcing me to learn. I actually ended up having to do some emergency fixes and builds the day after on request while everyone else in PDT was still at work (aw yeah, unsupervised builds!)<\/span><\/p>\n

If anything, I\u2019d like to be more familiar with Unity (or whatever tool we\u2019ll end up using) before it starts. In previous Ludum Dare jams where I\u2019d done coding, I had treated them as learning experiences, but I at least had some decent familiarity with the platforms (flash\/flixel). This time, I went into it completely cold and kind of not expecting to really do more than create assets. I had left working in the game industry a while ago but sometimes the pang of wanting to code a game hits me again. Unity was still kind of weird (coming from someone who’s more used to coding everything from scratch), but maybe because of new insight from working with other things, the whole components thing doesn’t feel as foreign and unwelcoming as it used to. Maybe I’ll get to do some more coding next time.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m not complaining about how it turned out though – I\u2019m the kind to enjoy the chaos of unplanned moments, and hey, the learning experience was awesome >:)<\/span><\/p>\n

edit<\/em>:<\/p>\n

woo, 64th out of > 1.5k jam entries in Audio and 50th overall!<\/p>","time":"September 15th, 2015 12:14 pm","title":"Super Sea Serpent Simulator \u2014 Post-Mortem Part 2!"}