{"author_name": "quadtree", "cat": "LD #33", "comments": [], "epoch": 1440529920, "likes": 2, "metadata": {"p_key": "13461", "p_author": "quadtree", "p_authorkey": "4024", "p_urlkey": "48718", "p_title": "Vale of Embers: Post Mortem", "p_cat": "LD #33", "p_event": "LD33", "p_time": "1440529920", "p_likes": "2", "p_comments": "0", "p_status": "UPD5", "us_key": "4024", "us_name": "quadtree", "us_username": "/author/quadtree/", "event_start": "1440115200", "event_key": "29", "event_name": "LD33"}, "text": "<p>My entry 48 hour compo entry was <a href=\"http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-33/?action=preview&amp;uid=4024\">Vale of Embers</a>, a game where you play as a raid boss and must fend off various raiding guilds:</p>\n <p><a href=\"http://ludumdare.com/compo/2015/08/25/vale-of-embers-post-mortem/ss2-90/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-494498\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-494498\" src=\"http://ludumdare.com/compo/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/ss23-550x318.png\" alt=\"ss2\" width=\"550\" height=\"318\" srcset=\"http://ludumdare.com/compo/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/ss23-300x173.png 300w, http://ludumdare.com/compo/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/ss23-550x318.png 550w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 550px) 100vw, 550px\" /></a></p>\n <h2>What Went Well</h2>\n <ul>\n <li><strong>The HTML5 port:</strong> Nearly every previous time I&#8217;ve done an HTML5 build I&#8217;ve had some nasty last minute issues. It hasn&#8217;t just been with UE4, but with any of the previous frameworks I&#8217;ve used (PlayN, libGDX). I was sure this was going to happen again so I delayed the HTML5 build until after the compo. But in the end the only thing I really had to fix was a couple minor lighting issues.</li>\n <li><strong>Using UE4.9 Preview: </strong>The current stable version of Unreal Engine is UE4.8. But UE4.9 Preview has a much improved HTML5 lighting engine. This was a big risk, but in the end it paid off. While I did encounter a bug where config files didn&#8217;t save correctly, having access to decals and better lighting in HTML5 mode more than made up for it.</li>\n <li><b>The top down view: </b>At the beginning, I had to decide between a more &#8220;Diablo like&#8221; top down view or a more 3rd person view. In the end I decided to go with the top down view as it does a better job of disguising how crummy my modeling job was, and I think it worked.</li>\n <li><strong>The Idea:</strong> The theme was one of the ones I voted for, although it probably wouldn&#8217;t have been my first choice. I quickly came up with three ideas: A Godzilla like game where you&#8217;re a large monster smashing up a city, a horror movie like game where you play as the monster, or a game where you play as a raid boss in a fictitious MMO. I essentially rejected the first two ideas because they&#8217;d need to be &#8220;serious&#8221;, and I judged that my lousy art skills created too much danger of <a href=\"http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Narm\">narm</a>.</li>\n </ul>\n <h2>What Did Not Go Well</h2>\n <ul>\n <li><strong>Time Management:</strong> Every time I do the LD, I tell myself that I&#8217;m going to come up with a plan that&#8217;s simple enough that I will not have to stay up till 5AM on Sunday. Yet, this time I ended up staying up till 5AM on Sunday anyway getting the models ready. At this point it&#8217;s starting to feel like a tradition for me.</li>\n <li><b>Meteor Balance:</b> While I&#8217;m fairly happy with how game balance turned out, the Meteor spell is still underpowered even after I tripled its damage and halved its mana cost. The problem is that meteor is the subject of a joke where it&#8217;s supposed to be easy for the raiders to avoid it so they look stupid when they get hit. The problem is that it really <em>is</em> easy to avoid, so they usually avoid it. I really should have gone with my original idea, which was to have certain raiders be extra stupid and fail to avoid meteor.</li>\n <li><strong>No Difficulty Scaling:</strong> Originally as you killed off raiders they were supposed to go get their fire resistance gear and eventually alert more elite guilds who would teleport in. In the end I didn&#8217;t have time to implement any of this so difficulty is essentially flat throughout the game.</li>\n <li><strong>AI Issues:</strong> The raiders&#8217; AI is pretty complex, and I think there are a few bugs remaining where they&#8217;ll fail to attack the boss properly. Still, I am happy that they usually manage to attack the boss despite the bugs. See chart below:</li>\n </ul>\n <p><a href=\"http://ludumdare.com/compo/2015/08/25/vale-of-embers-post-mortem/ld33_state_machine-dot/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-494564\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-494564\" src=\"http://ludumdare.com/compo/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/ld33_state_machine.dot_-550x229.png\" alt=\"ld33_state_machine.dot\" width=\"550\" height=\"229\" srcset=\"http://ludumdare.com/compo/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/ld33_state_machine.dot_-300x125.png 300w, http://ludumdare.com/compo/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/ld33_state_machine.dot_-550x229.png 550w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 550px) 100vw, 550px\" /></a></p>", "time": "August 25th, 2015 2:12 pm", "title": "Vale of Embers: Post Mortem"}