{"author_link":"\/users\/pseudohausen","author_name":"Pseudohausen","author_uid":"pseudohausen","comments":[],"epoch":1620276994,"event":"LD48","format":"md","ldjam_node_id":256298,"likes":3,"metadata":{"p_key":"157727","p_author":"Pseudohausen","p_authorkey":"1004017","p_urlkey":"377974","p_title":"Embark Post Mortem","p_cat":"LDJam ","p_event":"LD48","p_time":"1620276994","p_likes":"3","p_comments":"0","p_status":"WAYBACK","us_key":"1004017","us_name":"Pseudohausen","us_username":"pseudohausen","event_start":"1619222400","event_key":"109","event_name":"Ludum Dare 48"},"node":{"_collation":{"body_sanitizer":"TextUtils::SanitizeHTML via existing importer","event":"LD48","removed_author":false},"_superparent":233335,"_trust":1,"author":4017,"body":"This year, for the first time ever, I participated in Ludum Dare! I\u2019d always wanted to, but the stars had never aligned (burnout or busy). This year the masses picked the theme Deeper & Deeper, which felt like fertile jam ground to me. Since this wasn't my first jam I made a point of keeping the concept simple and achievable; a submarine piloted by cats who hunt fish, and delve the depths for greater snacks. It was the Spore cell game but instead of a cell you customize and control, it\u2019s just a submarine you don\u2019t customize but still control (must keep the scope under control).\n\nSo naturally I wasted 2 hours of the first night trying to make the submarine art look good and scrapped it.\n\n![Ship.png](\/\/\/raw\/1bf\/z\/4236a.png)\n\nBefore going to bed I dredged up an old idea that I\u2019d parked a month or two prior; idle brick breaker. Just put the paddles at the top of the screen and the bricks on the bottom and all of a sudden you\u2019re digging down, instead of breaking up. Game James are Easy.\n\n![CaptureScrenshot_002.jpg](\/\/\/raw\/1bf\/z\/4236b.jpg)\n\nThe rest of the jam was more or less smooth sailing:\n- Decided on an art style 6 hours before the jam was over\n- Wasted 4 or 5 hours writing a broken save system that crashed the game constantly\n- Wrote and recorded the music an hour before the end of the jam\n- Made my first build of the game after the jam was over and the submission hour had begun\n- Made most of the icons and upgrade data while the music was being multi-tracked and rendered, in the last 20 minutes\n- Spent most of the submission hour fixing game crashing bugs\n- Didn\u2019t catch all of the game crashing bugs\n\nAll in all I think the resulting game was really quite good. So I\u2019m going to delve a little deeper and see if I can turn it into a commercial project. Likely on Android, free to play.\n\nhttps:\/\/ldjam.com\/events\/ludum-dare\/48\/embark\n\nSo where do I begin?\n\nFirst things first, I want to consolidate the feedback on the game. Which basically breaks down into these buckets:\n\n![Graph.png](\/\/\/raw\/1bf\/z\/4236c.png)\n\nI think I\u2019ve knocked out the two main crash culprits:\n- I ran into an issue where the SaveManager was creating save data that simply didn\u2019t work\n- I was trying to destroy balls that couldn\u2019t be destroyed\n\nI\u2019ll go into a little more detail regarding that second one, since it\u2019s kind of interesting.\n\nBasically I didn\u2019t want to work on any visual effects or particle systems, and I wanted to reinforce the \u201cdigging\u201d theme of the game, so I decided to spawn the balls above the play area, and drop into frame. This also happens to be where the ball-death-trigger is. So I set up some logic that flags a ball as non-destroyable until it enters the play area. Which is fine until a level is finished, and I want to destroy all the balls in the game and spawn new ones. The game would repeatedly try and destroy any balls that were in the process of falling from above, but couldn\u2019t destroy them due to that \u201cnon-destroyable\u201d flag. I feel absolutely foolish that I didn\u2019t catch this, but, that\u2019s jamming.\n\n![BallDiagram.png](\/\/\/raw\/1bf\/z\/4236d.png)\n\nAs for the art direction and audio direction, I\u2019m really happy with the results in the jam and I feel like I have a good foundation to grow from. I want to add a little more visual depth and excitement, and I want to explore doing something more generative with the music, but what the game looks and sounds like today will be the basis of what it looks like when I eventually release a commercial version.\n\nThe biggest issue in my eyes is the complete lack of a tutorial, and very poor onboarding experience. I literally drop you into the game loop, with no hand holding. That won\u2019t be acceptable. My plan is to introduce each core element individually (balls, paddles, spells, upgrades). Focus on making the first few levels shorter and more engaging.\n\nAnyways, this is a long way of saying \u201cthank you everyone who left feedback on Embark\u201d, you made it all worth it!\n","comments":0,"created":"2021-05-06T04:41:38Z","files":[],"files-timestamp":0,"id":256298,"love":3,"love-timestamp":"2021-05-06T11:25:33Z","meta":[],"modified":"2021-05-06T11:25:33Z","name":"Embark Post Mortem","node-timestamp":"2021-05-06T04:56:34Z","parent":236835,"parents":[1,5,9,233335,236835],"path":"\/events\/ludum-dare\/48\/embark\/embark-post-mortem","published":"2021-05-06T04:56:34Z","scope":"public","slug":"embark-post-mortem","subsubtype":"","subtype":"","type":"post","version":788427},"node_metadata":{"n_key":"256298","n_urlkey":"377974","n_parent":"236835","n_path":"\/events\/ludum-dare\/48\/embark\/embark-post-mortem","n_slug":"embark-post-mortem","n_type":"post","n_subtype":"","n_subsubtype":"","n_author":"4017","n_created":"1620276098","n_modified":"1620300333","n_version":"788427","n_status":"WAYBACK"},"source_url":"https:\/\/ldjam.com\/events\/ludum-dare\/48\/embark\/embark-post-mortem","text":"This year, for the first time ever, I participated in Ludum Dare! I\u2019d always wanted to, but the stars had never aligned (burnout or busy). This year the masses picked the theme Deeper & Deeper, which felt like fertile jam ground to me. Since this wasn't my first jam I made a point of keeping the concept simple and achievable; a submarine piloted by cats who hunt fish, and delve the depths for greater snacks. It was the Spore cell game but instead of a cell you customize and control, it\u2019s just a submarine you don\u2019t customize but still control (must keep the scope under control).\n\nSo naturally I wasted 2 hours of the first night trying to make the submarine art look good and scrapped it.\n\n![Ship.png](\/\/\/raw\/1bf\/z\/4236a.png)\n\nBefore going to bed I dredged up an old idea that I\u2019d parked a month or two prior; idle brick breaker. Just put the paddles at the top of the screen and the bricks on the bottom and all of a sudden you\u2019re digging down, instead of breaking up. Game James are Easy.\n\n![CaptureScrenshot_002.jpg](\/\/\/raw\/1bf\/z\/4236b.jpg)\n\nThe rest of the jam was more or less smooth sailing:\n- Decided on an art style 6 hours before the jam was over\n- Wasted 4 or 5 hours writing a broken save system that crashed the game constantly\n- Wrote and recorded the music an hour before the end of the jam\n- Made my first build of the game after the jam was over and the submission hour had begun\n- Made most of the icons and upgrade data while the music was being multi-tracked and rendered, in the last 20 minutes\n- Spent most of the submission hour fixing game crashing bugs\n- Didn\u2019t catch all of the game crashing bugs\n\nAll in all I think the resulting game was really quite good. So I\u2019m going to delve a little deeper and see if I can turn it into a commercial project. Likely on Android, free to play.\n\nhttps:\/\/ldjam.com\/events\/ludum-dare\/48\/embark\n\nSo where do I begin?\n\nFirst things first, I want to consolidate the feedback on the game. Which basically breaks down into these buckets:\n\n![Graph.png](\/\/\/raw\/1bf\/z\/4236c.png)\n\nI think I\u2019ve knocked out the two main crash culprits:\n- I ran into an issue where the SaveManager was creating save data that simply didn\u2019t work\n- I was trying to destroy balls that couldn\u2019t be destroyed\n\nI\u2019ll go into a little more detail regarding that second one, since it\u2019s kind of interesting.\n\nBasically I didn\u2019t want to work on any visual effects or particle systems, and I wanted to reinforce the \u201cdigging\u201d theme of the game, so I decided to spawn the balls above the play area, and drop into frame. This also happens to be where the ball-death-trigger is. So I set up some logic that flags a ball as non-destroyable until it enters the play area. Which is fine until a level is finished, and I want to destroy all the balls in the game and spawn new ones. The game would repeatedly try and destroy any balls that were in the process of falling from above, but couldn\u2019t destroy them due to that \u201cnon-destroyable\u201d flag. I feel absolutely foolish that I didn\u2019t catch this, but, that\u2019s jamming.\n\n![BallDiagram.png](\/\/\/raw\/1bf\/z\/4236d.png)\n\nAs for the art direction and audio direction, I\u2019m really happy with the results in the jam and I feel like I have a good foundation to grow from. I want to add a little more visual depth and excitement, and I want to explore doing something more generative with the music, but what the game looks and sounds like today will be the basis of what it looks like when I eventually release a commercial version.\n\nThe biggest issue in my eyes is the complete lack of a tutorial, and very poor onboarding experience. I literally drop you into the game loop, with no hand holding. That won\u2019t be acceptable. My plan is to introduce each core element individually (balls, paddles, spells, upgrades). Focus on making the first few levels shorter and more engaging.\n\nAnyways, this is a long way of saying \u201cthank you everyone who left feedback on Embark\u201d, you made it all worth it!\n","title":"Embark Post Mortem","wayback_source":[]}