Introduction

Another Ludum Dare!  Let’s take a moment and look beneath the surface of what made my game, Truth, possible.

I was apprehensive at first about doing a 3D game.  There’s always a lot to account for when making a 3D game and you don’t have a lot of time.  However I was really into the theme.  I started thinking about all of the usual cliches: underground, underwater, devils, etc… but then I started thinking about humanity, and ourselves.  Looking in to myself I was able to draw some metaphors that I really liked and thought translated well to this dungeon-esque adventure.

The goal I had in mind was quite lofty, but I WANTED to do it and see it through.

What Went Right

I’m comfortable working with Maya, Unity and Photoshop.  I think my familiarity with those tools was what ultimately helped me finish this game.  I just love working with that trifecta of tooling.

I also created a design document that I tried to stay true to and used it to help guide me along the way.

I used a modular approach to the level design which was very beneficial.  Unity was a big help in this regard with it’s use of prefabs (although that did cause me some trouble down the road).

The number of pieces I had to model was very small.  It could probably be argued that I could have modeled less pieces!  These pieces were modeled VERY low poly, with very few triangles.  The door was probably the most complicated one.  Since the poly count was low I went ahead and used mesh colliders on them when I imported them into Unity.  For the wooden posts and lamps, I used box colliders.

I then combined these parts into bigger wholes and made prefabs for halls and sections.  Then I began piecing them together.  This workflow made it really quick for me to put together the level that I wanted.

I also used a single texture/material which was very low res allowing for quick and dirty pixel work.

What Went Wrong

When I posted my design document, I mentioned I was working on a technical design.  Well, that didn’t happen.  I really needed to invest the time there, to work through how I was going to try and accomplish certain things.  I think this would have benefited me more than anything.  Instead I had to figure things out and trouble shoot as I went along.  I at least should have had a list of assets that I needed to create.

The prefab thing was awesome, I love Unity for this.  However, if you have nested prefabs you run in to trouble if a component inside one of the lower, nested ones changes.  This caused me some difficulty when I realized I needed to go back and tweak my UVs.  It should be so simple right, re-import the model and it will get changed everywhere.  Well, that didn’t happen due to the depth of my nested prefabs.  My experience with this might make for a good blog post though!

Even though the texture was small, I saved it until the end.  I chose to focus on the Unity and 3D aspect of it and getting that working first, then go back in and paint the texture map.  This of course left me scrambling at the end trying to get the textures right, and me not being truly happy with them.

In Conclusion

I had a lot of fun.  I made something I am proud of, and I can’t wait to do it again!

I’m in the process of working on a post jam version of the game.  That prefab issue is seriously kicking my butt though.  However, I still love Unity, and believe you can make great games rapidly using it.

I really appreciate everyone who has taken the time to play my game.  All of your feedback is welcome and is being considered.

If you haven’t had a chance to play Truth yet, play it and rate it, I would love to hear what you think!