{"author_link":"\/users\/ithildin","author_name":"Ithildin","author_uid":"ithildin","comments":[],"epoch":1556835619,"event":"LD44","format":"md","ldjam_node_id":156131,"likes":3,"metadata":{"p_key":"132072","p_author":"Ithildin","p_authorkey":"1000455","p_urlkey":"348266","p_title":"Overburnt - Postmortem","p_cat":"LDJam ","p_event":"LD44","p_time":"1556835619","p_likes":"3","p_comments":"0","p_status":"WAYBACK","us_key":"1000455","us_name":"Ithildin","us_username":"ithildin","event_start":"1556236800","event_key":"75","event_name":"LD 44"},"node":{"_collation":{"body_sanitizer":"TextUtils::SanitizeHTML via existing importer","event":"LD44","removed_author":false},"_superparent":139254,"_trust":8,"author":455,"body":"After a failed attempt at a roguelike for #LD43 I tried to learn the lesson for this time,  so I set submitting a somewhat decent entry as my main goal. To do so I'd really have to keep scope under control.\n\nEnter [**Overburnt**](https:\/\/ldjam.com\/events\/ludum-dare\/44\/overburnt)\n\n![overburnt.gif](\/\/\/raw\/7c1\/z\/24668.gif)\n\n## Ideation\nLast Friday after work I felt too tired to brainstorm ideas with the final round themes as I usually do and went to bed early to have a good rest. That way I could have an early start on Saturday morning. I wasn't too keen on the final choice because it felt too limiting, but an idea started to take shape relatively soon (you can see it on the notes screencap below):\n\n![20190502_230311.jpg](\/\/\/raw\/7c1\/z\/24666.jpg)\n\nTime management with a capitalist-ish setting + \"permadeath\" (or rather, perma-fatigue...). \n\nWith the International labour day just around the corner I thought it was a good match with the theme both mechanically and from a narrative point of view: You would play the role of a salaried worker exhausting him\/herself to maximise the income for a somewhat sociopathic patron. I also happen to like the game mechanics in games like Overcooked or Diner Dash, so I had a thing.\n\nEven if the idea stuck quickly I kept resisting it for some hours, searching for something better, until I stopped wasting time and started designing. At this point the game was intended to have a cooking thematic (the title, the \"recipes\" terminology and even the README on Github still reflect this), and I'd have a player character controlled with a gamepad or a keyboard moving around to do the job. The effects of fatigue would be obvious, since an exhausted player would move slower, or be able to carry around less things.\n\nHowever, after spending time creating a placeholder walk cycle I reconsidered: I had almost nothing ready at that point and player control could take time to get right. I decided to push it down on my priority list and start with simpler drag and drop controls, with the avatar now being a part of the interface, as in DOOM. This would buy me more time to have something functional sooner, but then I also began thinking that a cooking time manager was quite derivative, so I changed my mind again. Instead of cooking I switched to a \"fantasy town\" theme, where customers would be heroes trying to equip themselves. With these two changes the game finally took real shape in my head, and actual work would start.\n\n\n## What went well\n* **Scoping and prioritization** once I got past the initial doubts.\n* **Design focus**. I have a nasty habit when I'm making **games** for jams: As a programmer first, I tend to prioritise system implementation over doing something fun with those systems, and with less than 48h to do EVERYTHING it's super easy to get lost on architecture details or succumb to the temptation of adding yet another (incomplete) feature instead of creating levels and thinking about pacing. This time I tried to put the game's design first and to some extent I did better than other times.\n* **Art polish.** It can still be improved, and the UI still needs more work, but I'm happy with the buildings and items. Characters were a bit rushed, but they don't look bad either IMO.\n* **Core mechanic** is solid and engaging. \n* **Android support** almost out of the box. Credit to Unity here, of course. I hadn't originally planned to make a mobile build, but as the deadline got closer I thought: \"Why not?\" I did have to make some adjustments so the UI adjusted correctly to my test device's aspect ratio and it's a bit harder to drag the smaller areas there, but other than that everything was functional.\n\n## What went wrong\n* **Theme connection is unclear on the game's current state**. In my head the theme fits like a glove, but right now that doesn't show up in reality.\n\n    First, the fatigue mechanic isn't fully fleshed yet. It's missing impact in gameplay, there's barely any audiovisual feedback, and levels right now aren't punishing enough so you actually need to hold the brakes and stop optimising the crafting pipeline in order to rest a bit.\n\n    Second, I also  wanted to have a fixed, small \"salary\" the player would earn at the end of each level so she could notice how smaller salary was compared to the earnings she's made on that level. This wasn't prioritary, so it was also cut from the submission tasklist.\n\n    And then there would be other more obvious mechanisms, like having pictures showing conversation between the player and her boss, which were never really on the table for the COMPO to-do list.\n\t\n* **Lots of time wasted on Saturday.** You can see a glimpse of this on the Ideation section. I wasn't really convinced about the game I wanted to make for several hours, and while I believe the decisions I made were correct in the end, a lot of time was wasted to arrive there. That time could have put to way better use, such as...\n\n* **No time for sounds or music (again!!).** :sob: I've made some tracks now for the first post-compo version, but I'm cranky that I couldn't do anything for the actual submission.\n\n    You can hear a bit here (no effects yet, though):\n    https:\/\/youtu.be\/cHKijHNQGNU\n\n* **Controls may be unclear** if you haven't read the (admittedly long) \"HOW TO\" screen text. I noticed this while showing the game to a couple of friends who struggled to figure out how they could craft things or give them to customers until I explained. \n    In my mind controls are really intuitive (even if they still need more polish), but on the one hand I have played similar games in the past and on the other, there's this tiny, tiny detail: I f*cking made the game :sweat_smile: \n\n    I have on my post-compo task list a couple of entries to either improve the \"how to\" screen or, even better, teach the player to play in-game, but I shouldn't take for granted that people will immediately grasp the controls.\n\nAnd well, this is pretty much everything. In general I'm pretty happy with the result, and I expect someone can enjoy playing the game.\n\nThank you if you've read up until this point :D","comments":0,"created":"2019-05-02T20:58:22Z","files":[],"files-timestamp":0,"id":156131,"love":3,"love-timestamp":"2019-05-03T00:16:00Z","meta":[],"modified":"2019-05-03T00:16:00Z","name":"Overburnt - Postmortem","node-timestamp":"2019-05-02T22:20:19Z","parent":149899,"parents":[1,5,9,139254,149899],"path":"\/events\/ludum-dare\/44\/overburnt\/overburnt-postmortem","published":"2019-05-02T22:20:19Z","scope":"public","slug":"overburnt-postmortem","subsubtype":"","subtype":"","type":"post","version":470089},"node_metadata":{"n_key":"156131","n_urlkey":"348266","n_parent":"149899","n_path":"\/events\/ludum-dare\/44\/overburnt\/overburnt-postmortem","n_slug":"overburnt-postmortem","n_type":"post","n_subtype":"","n_subsubtype":"","n_author":"455","n_created":"1556830702","n_modified":"1556842560","n_version":"470089","n_status":"WAYBACK"},"source_url":"https:\/\/ldjam.com\/events\/ludum-dare\/44\/overburnt\/overburnt-postmortem","text":"After a failed attempt at a roguelike for #LD43 I tried to learn the lesson for this time,  so I set submitting a somewhat decent entry as my main goal. To do so I'd really have to keep scope under control.\n\nEnter [**Overburnt**](https:\/\/ldjam.com\/events\/ludum-dare\/44\/overburnt)\n\n![overburnt.gif](\/\/\/raw\/7c1\/z\/24668.gif)\n\n## Ideation\nLast Friday after work I felt too tired to brainstorm ideas with the final round themes as I usually do and went to bed early to have a good rest. That way I could have an early start on Saturday morning. I wasn't too keen on the final choice because it felt too limiting, but an idea started to take shape relatively soon (you can see it on the notes screencap below):\n\n![20190502_230311.jpg](\/\/\/raw\/7c1\/z\/24666.jpg)\n\nTime management with a capitalist-ish setting + \"permadeath\" (or rather, perma-fatigue...). \n\nWith the International labour day just around the corner I thought it was a good match with the theme both mechanically and from a narrative point of view: You would play the role of a salaried worker exhausting him\/herself to maximise the income for a somewhat sociopathic patron. I also happen to like the game mechanics in games like Overcooked or Diner Dash, so I had a thing.\n\nEven if the idea stuck quickly I kept resisting it for some hours, searching for something better, until I stopped wasting time and started designing. At this point the game was intended to have a cooking thematic (the title, the \"recipes\" terminology and even the README on Github still reflect this), and I'd have a player character controlled with a gamepad or a keyboard moving around to do the job. The effects of fatigue would be obvious, since an exhausted player would move slower, or be able to carry around less things.\n\nHowever, after spending time creating a placeholder walk cycle I reconsidered: I had almost nothing ready at that point and player control could take time to get right. I decided to push it down on my priority list and start with simpler drag and drop controls, with the avatar now being a part of the interface, as in DOOM. This would buy me more time to have something functional sooner, but then I also began thinking that a cooking time manager was quite derivative, so I changed my mind again. Instead of cooking I switched to a \"fantasy town\" theme, where customers would be heroes trying to equip themselves. With these two changes the game finally took real shape in my head, and actual work would start.\n\n\n## What went well\n* **Scoping and prioritization** once I got past the initial doubts.\n* **Design focus**. I have a nasty habit when I'm making **games** for jams: As a programmer first, I tend to prioritise system implementation over doing something fun with those systems, and with less than 48h to do EVERYTHING it's super easy to get lost on architecture details or succumb to the temptation of adding yet another (incomplete) feature instead of creating levels and thinking about pacing. This time I tried to put the game's design first and to some extent I did better than other times.\n* **Art polish.** It can still be improved, and the UI still needs more work, but I'm happy with the buildings and items. Characters were a bit rushed, but they don't look bad either IMO.\n* **Core mechanic** is solid and engaging. \n* **Android support** almost out of the box. Credit to Unity here, of course. I hadn't originally planned to make a mobile build, but as the deadline got closer I thought: \"Why not?\" I did have to make some adjustments so the UI adjusted correctly to my test device's aspect ratio and it's a bit harder to drag the smaller areas there, but other than that everything was functional.\n\n## What went wrong\n* **Theme connection is unclear on the game's current state**. In my head the theme fits like a glove, but right now that doesn't show up in reality.\n\n    First, the fatigue mechanic isn't fully fleshed yet. It's missing impact in gameplay, there's barely any audiovisual feedback, and levels right now aren't punishing enough so you actually need to hold the brakes and stop optimising the crafting pipeline in order to rest a bit.\n\n    Second, I also  wanted to have a fixed, small \"salary\" the player would earn at the end of each level so she could notice how smaller salary was compared to the earnings she's made on that level. This wasn't prioritary, so it was also cut from the submission tasklist.\n\n    And then there would be other more obvious mechanisms, like having pictures showing conversation between the player and her boss, which were never really on the table for the COMPO to-do list.\n\t\n* **Lots of time wasted on Saturday.** You can see a glimpse of this on the Ideation section. I wasn't really convinced about the game I wanted to make for several hours, and while I believe the decisions I made were correct in the end, a lot of time was wasted to arrive there. That time could have put to way better use, such as...\n\n* **No time for sounds or music (again!!).** :sob: I've made some tracks now for the first post-compo version, but I'm cranky that I couldn't do anything for the actual submission.\n\n    You can hear a bit here (no effects yet, though):\n    https:\/\/youtu.be\/cHKijHNQGNU\n\n* **Controls may be unclear** if you haven't read the (admittedly long) \"HOW TO\" screen text. I noticed this while showing the game to a couple of friends who struggled to figure out how they could craft things or give them to customers until I explained. \n    In my mind controls are really intuitive (even if they still need more polish), but on the one hand I have played similar games in the past and on the other, there's this tiny, tiny detail: I f*cking made the game :sweat_smile: \n\n    I have on my post-compo task list a couple of entries to either improve the \"how to\" screen or, even better, teach the player to play in-game, but I shouldn't take for granted that people will immediately grasp the controls.\n\nAnd well, this is pretty much everything. In general I'm pretty happy with the result, and I expect someone can enjoy playing the game.\n\nThank you if you've read up until this point :D","title":"Overburnt - Postmortem","wayback_source":[]}