{"author_link":"\/users\/witdarkstar","author_name":"Witdarkstar","author_uid":"witdarkstar","comments":[],"epoch":1587752629,"event":"LD46","format":"md","ldjam_node_id":207844,"likes":3,"metadata":{"p_key":"144834","p_author":"Witdarkstar","p_authorkey":"1195314","p_urlkey":"361247","p_title":"A Ludam Dare Post Mortem - How'd These Plant Get Cool?","p_cat":"LDJam ","p_event":"LD46","p_time":"1587752629","p_likes":"3","p_comments":"0","p_status":"WAYBACK","us_key":"1195314","us_name":"Witdarkstar","us_username":"witdarkstar","event_start":"1587081600","event_key":"77","event_name":"Ludum Dare 46"},"node":{"_collation":{"body_sanitizer":"TextUtils::SanitizeHTML via existing importer","event":"LD46","removed_author":false},"_superparent":176557,"_trust":1,"author":195314,"body":"Hi there everyone,\n\nI hope you all had a great Ludam Dare like myself. This is my 10th game jam, but first Ludam Dare and first \"solo\" jam. I'll get to the quotes later.\n\nI found out about this Ludam Dare the Friday night after it had officially begun. When I saw the theme of \"Keep it Alive\", I made a joke about making a tamagachi style game, but with a plant instead. I thought about it and went to my asset packs in Unreal and realized I hate a house plant assets pack and a house asset pack. All I needed was a watering can, which my friend offered to make. I then began on my \"solo\" venture. I didn't make everything from scratch. I was using asset packs and a few assets from a friend, but that was ok. If I didn't have these things, I probably wouldn't have participated. Instead I decided to approach something I've never done and came out the other side feeling really good about this little game. I love seeing the work of the compo jam and seeing those people shine, but it was also good not feeling the pressure of the normal jam and just making a game.\n\nI got the basics up and running pretty quickly, but the biggest challenge I needed to tack was, \"How do I have it so this game plays even when it's turned off?\" There was a lot of data to handle to save and load properly and keeping track of time passed when the game turned off and adjust things accordingly. Luckily the internet is a great resource and I was able to find little bits here and there of information that I was able to piece together to figure it out. Now that I figured it out all was great! Well no, there were a lot of bugs. While I believe I was structuring gameplay object correctly, I was having a really hard time saving them and loading them correctly. This took up many hours of debugging and I'm glad I did it. I've learned so much more about saving\/loading than I ever would have otherwise. This right here is the main reason I love game jams. It gives opportunities to push yourself to learn something new and I sure did here.\n\nSo the main systems were done, but I didn't have a lot of idle\/interaction systems. I only had 48 hours to really work on this so there wasn't a lot of time. I figured out some basic fun interactions, but I really wish I could have fleshed this out more.\n\nAlso building UI is hard. Luckily I had a main menu asset that I could modify to get that all handled, but all the UI for the game needed to be figured out as I was building it. Luckily I built some pretty crude buttons early on to get everything working in a prototype, but UX and UI is a lot of work to really make it smooth. I wish I could have focused here more to flesh out the experience, but I got enough there I think was decently approachable. Not getting a more robust interactive UI did kill the one thing I wish I could have done for the jam, and that was unlocks. Idle games are all about progression, but doing progression right means needing to message it properly. I might have been able to do this, but I didn't plan ahead enough for it, so I took the alternative route and gated things by price.\n\nIn the end I have a weird little game I'm proud of that I never thought I would have built. I've gotten great feedback from so many of you and I'm glad so many enjoyed it. I hope this little post mortem was insightful and I look forward to doing more Ludam Dares in the future.\n\n\n\n","comments":0,"created":"2020-04-24T17:57:07Z","files":[],"files-timestamp":0,"id":207844,"love":3,"love-timestamp":"2020-04-24T18:52:48Z","meta":[],"modified":"2020-04-24T18:52:48Z","name":"A Ludam Dare Post Mortem - How'd These Plant Get Cool?","node-timestamp":"2020-04-24T18:23:49Z","parent":196262,"parents":[1,5,9,176557,196262],"path":"\/events\/ludum-dare\/46\/cool-plants-chill-beats\/a-ludam-dare-post-mortem-howd-these-plant-get-cool","published":"2020-04-24T18:23:49Z","scope":"public","slug":"a-ludam-dare-post-mortem-howd-these-plant-get-cool","subsubtype":"","subtype":"","type":"post","version":629958},"node_metadata":{"n_key":"207844","n_urlkey":"361247","n_parent":"196262","n_path":"\/events\/ludum-dare\/46\/cool-plants-chill-beats\/a-ludam-dare-post-mortem-howd-these-plant-get-cool","n_slug":"a-ludam-dare-post-mortem-howd-th","n_type":"post","n_subtype":"","n_subsubtype":"","n_author":"195314","n_created":"1587751027","n_modified":"1587754368","n_version":"629958","n_status":"WAYBACK"},"source_url":"https:\/\/ldjam.com\/events\/ludum-dare\/46\/cool-plants-chill-beats\/a-ludam-dare-post-mortem-howd-these-plant-get-cool","text":"Hi there everyone,\n\nI hope you all had a great Ludam Dare like myself. This is my 10th game jam, but first Ludam Dare and first \"solo\" jam. I'll get to the quotes later.\n\nI found out about this Ludam Dare the Friday night after it had officially begun. When I saw the theme of \"Keep it Alive\", I made a joke about making a tamagachi style game, but with a plant instead. I thought about it and went to my asset packs in Unreal and realized I hate a house plant assets pack and a house asset pack. All I needed was a watering can, which my friend offered to make. I then began on my \"solo\" venture. I didn't make everything from scratch. I was using asset packs and a few assets from a friend, but that was ok. If I didn't have these things, I probably wouldn't have participated. Instead I decided to approach something I've never done and came out the other side feeling really good about this little game. I love seeing the work of the compo jam and seeing those people shine, but it was also good not feeling the pressure of the normal jam and just making a game.\n\nI got the basics up and running pretty quickly, but the biggest challenge I needed to tack was, \"How do I have it so this game plays even when it's turned off?\" There was a lot of data to handle to save and load properly and keeping track of time passed when the game turned off and adjust things accordingly. Luckily the internet is a great resource and I was able to find little bits here and there of information that I was able to piece together to figure it out. Now that I figured it out all was great! Well no, there were a lot of bugs. While I believe I was structuring gameplay object correctly, I was having a really hard time saving them and loading them correctly. This took up many hours of debugging and I'm glad I did it. I've learned so much more about saving\/loading than I ever would have otherwise. This right here is the main reason I love game jams. It gives opportunities to push yourself to learn something new and I sure did here.\n\nSo the main systems were done, but I didn't have a lot of idle\/interaction systems. I only had 48 hours to really work on this so there wasn't a lot of time. I figured out some basic fun interactions, but I really wish I could have fleshed this out more.\n\nAlso building UI is hard. Luckily I had a main menu asset that I could modify to get that all handled, but all the UI for the game needed to be figured out as I was building it. Luckily I built some pretty crude buttons early on to get everything working in a prototype, but UX and UI is a lot of work to really make it smooth. I wish I could have focused here more to flesh out the experience, but I got enough there I think was decently approachable. Not getting a more robust interactive UI did kill the one thing I wish I could have done for the jam, and that was unlocks. Idle games are all about progression, but doing progression right means needing to message it properly. I might have been able to do this, but I didn't plan ahead enough for it, so I took the alternative route and gated things by price.\n\nIn the end I have a weird little game I'm proud of that I never thought I would have built. I've gotten great feedback from so many of you and I'm glad so many enjoyed it. I hope this little post mortem was insightful and I look forward to doing more Ludam Dares in the future.\n\n\n\n","title":"A Ludam Dare Post Mortem - How'd These Plant Get Cool?","wayback_source":[]}