greetings! I bring you the post-mortem for R.E.P.O.C.O.S.M.O.S.

Theme

First had an idea for a multi-player real time strategy game with connecting planets through some kind of piramid stargate when planets are aligned in the correct rotation, where you expolore and colonise planets, mine resources from asteroids and build spaceports for new ships and these piramid stargates to get a fast connection to travel between the planets. really liked this idea but the way i first envisioned it would be impossible to make sense off in 2/3 days, i kept the stargate – tower idea..but went for more close up scale. These stargates didn’t get any actual role in the game just yet. Right now it’s more part of the backstory where you need to re-secure this so stargate called the ‘worhole initiation tower’. In a post game these will get a lot more attention, and will serve as the goal of the game for different mission, perhaps with a bit of the RTS backstory on a more planetary level..

What went right

This being my second Ludum Dare, i’m extremely happy with the result..the extra work i put in my first entry developing a post-game really payed off, a lot more experience with unity this time, i’ve had a nice balance between work spend on graphics, sound and coding, where the game is not over focused on only one particular element…the gameplay of gaining velocity and jumping between planets has come out really well, though i’ve probably spend a bit to much time polishing this in comparison to the combat system and level design..very pleased with the sound. I originally had an other track i made about a year ago for it..but i didn’t feel exactly right as is was more a song/soundtrack. fortunately my friend/composer Anna came up with a great track she had made, that fit the mood i was looking for extremely well, i just added some bass to it on the korg dw-6000 and it was done, i had a couple more synth chords to go with it when enemy’s appear but they didn’t get into the game yet. the sound effects on top off that I made with abletons operator fm synth…

What gives ?

not much really, time trouble maybe, could not start until Saturday afternoon, so i went for the jam..there is a lot more i wanted to put in, the enemy’s I put in the last few hours are only what I had planned as part of the planetary defense-system, some off the planets would be patrolled by rogue robots, some flying things and probably some bigger end-boss robot near the tower, so the level is not yet what i was aiming for, but what can you do in 2 or 3 days…Also the aiming of the laser still needs a lot of improvement. Still I’m really happy I got up a level which it is fully playable and the main ideas come across…

What’s next ?

Definitely going to work on this up to one full playable level the way i intended…I experimented a bit with mouse aiming, though i’m still sure how to implement it best when aiming for something behind the player…right now i’m already working on the droids and end-boss..when they are in i will take the combat system for a do-over

the droids that didn’t get in…yet..

If this post-mortem got you enthausiastic to take a look, play it here :

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-30/?action=preview&uid=29159

Comments and suggestions are greatly appreciated.