{"author_name":"Tuism","cat":"LD #33","comments":[{"author_name":"","time":"September 7, 2015 4:54 pm","epoch":1441662840,"text":"Loved this game! And reading about its creation was awesome to read as well. \ud83d\ude00","spam":"N"}],"epoch":1441655040,"likes":1,"metadata":{"p_key":"13024","p_author":"Tuism","p_authorkey":"35114","p_urlkey":"48278","p_title":"PokEscape: a quick not-yet-postmortem","p_cat":"LD #33","p_event":"LD33","p_time":"1441655040","p_likes":"1","p_comments":"1","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"35114","us_name":"Tuism","us_username":"\/author\/tuism\/","event_start":"1440115200","event_key":"29","event_name":"LD33"},"text":"

Below is\u00a0duplicated from my own site: Twoplus Games<\/a>. Not-yet-postmortem because I need to see the score before calling a postmortem \ud83d\ude1b<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TL;DR<\/strong>: Had an amazing Ludum Dare, one week to go for rating LD33 games, so go play my game (available as web, windows, osx, linux):<\/p>\n

Play PokEscape now!<\/a><\/h3>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"PokEscape_04_combined\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Interpretive Dance<\/h1>\n

 <\/p>\n

Last Ludum Dare, I went in with pre-conceived notions of what I was going to make, and I felt it would have been better if I didn’t<\/a>. This time, I went in with a blank canvas. Hell, I didn’t even look at the theme list to prepare myself.<\/p>\n

The theme was You Are the Monster<\/a> – a theme quite a few jammers\u00a0bemoaned because it’s quite close to a theme a few LDs back – You Are the Villain<\/a>. I wasn’t around back then (darn kids, right?), but I vaguely had the feeling it was done before. I didn’t care though, brainstorm commenced, there were a few decent ones, but when our chatter made me laugh out loud, I knew I had to do it;<\/p>\n

You’re a monster. You’re a pocket<\/strong> monster (pokemon). You’re the lamest pokemon ever. You’re Magikarp<\/a>. No, you’re so lame, you’re Magicrap<\/strong>. But you want to be the best you can be. Which is Gyrados<\/a>. No, Gyradeuce<\/strong>. The crap puns flowed. I laughed, and off I\u00a0went.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A stealth game where you have to eat your cover<\/h1>\n

 <\/p>\n

That was the final destination of the core mechanic brainstorm, and that turned out to be super important. There were many interpretations of that core mechanic alone – Initially the game was not going to be on a grid, and physics-based, so you would dash around the place and slide and roll, etc. A turn-based version was also considered. But eventually a real-time, grid-based system was decided upon because it was actually the most predictable in terms of building and balancing.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Art priorities: 1. Fast, 2. Acceptable<\/h1>\n

 <\/p>\n

The process was fairly straightforward, I made placeholder art because I didn’t want to spend too much time on art in the beginning, and just like the previous LD, I didn’t really get a chance to update them later. I think this is pretty much going to be the norm rather than the exception. Make okay placeholder art, but don’t waste time on them initially.<\/p>\n

I’m privileged in this regard because I’m an artist\/designer primarily. But don’t worry, what advantage I have on art I make up in shortcomings on my coding side.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Three dee two dee<\/h1>\n

 <\/p>\n

The one interesting thing that I feel like is worth talking about technically and art wise is the 3D\/2D effect that I have, where the sprites order correctly. Anyone who knows about z-sorting knows it’s a chore, and I didn’t feel like making the game constantly read y values and re-assigning them to different layers at runtime. So I tinkered and came up with this:<\/p>\n

\"3d2d\"<\/p>\n

By tilting all the sprites at an angle, they overlapped correctly without having to programmatically set each sprite’s layer at runtime. The camera is a perspective camera with a limited field of vision, so it looks 2D, but is set in 3D.<\/p>\n

I really liked how the effect came out – there’s a little 3Dness to it but still has the 2D charm that I love. And I didn’t need to make polygons \ud83d\ude1b<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In action<\/h1>\n

 <\/p>\n

First of all, thanks very much for all you who played and rated and talked about it! \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n

Initial feedback on the game was super cool \":)\"\u00a0It’s currently sitting on 110 ratings, which I think is the highest I’ve had (though I can’t confirm this, don’t know how to look up past rating counts).<\/p>\n

There’s also been a bit of coverage\u00a0by some really awesome people \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n

By Indiegames.com<\/a><\/p>\n

By\u00a0Jupi<\/a><\/p>\n