{"author_name":"conormn","cat":"LD #29","comments":[{"author_name":"GreatBigJerk","time":"May 1, 2014 4:47 pm","epoch":1398980820,"text":"Delve definitely wins out as the nicest looking thing I’ve played. In the 200 or so games I’ve tried, it still stands out. Great work!","spam":"N"},{"author_name":"","time":"May 1, 2014 5:08 pm","epoch":1398982080,"text":"Was that Andross from the first Star Fox game on the SNES?","spam":"N"},{"author_name":"conormn","time":"May 1, 2014 9:26 pm","epoch":1398997560,"text":"@GreatBigJerk – Thanks so much for the kind words. Really glad you liked it \":)\"
\n @GaTechGrad – The face at the end of Delve came out of a lack of time and the ease of creating a face out of straight edges. Tho Andross is in my subconscious, the likeness was unintentional.","spam":"N"}],"epoch":1398978600,"likes":3,"metadata":{"p_key":"30057","p_author":"conormn","p_authorkey":"31095","p_urlkey":"65524","p_title":"LD29_delve_6","p_cat":"LD #29","p_event":"LD29","p_time":"1398978600","p_likes":"3","p_comments":"3","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"31095","us_name":"conormn","us_username":"conormn","event_start":"1398384000","event_key":"22","event_name":"LD29"},"text":"

The Delve<\/a> postmortem.<\/p>\n

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First off, thanks so much to\u00a0those who played Delve and left\u00a0such nice comments and feedback, I truly appreciate it. And also thanks to everyone for making such fun and creative games! Very inspiring as always.<\/p>\n

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The Concept<\/strong>
\n I struggled a bit with this theme and landed on\u00a0a simple rummaging \u201cdown the rabbit hole\u201d searching game that I wasn’t too excited about. Not a great way to start a game jam. It was a toss up between that and a wallpaper removal simulator, which I really hope someone ended up making. The direction I ended up taking at least let me practice some animation which is something I love doing.<\/p>\n

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The Visuals<\/strong>
\n This part of the project took about 95% of the time. For example I spent all day Saturday just on the title screen and half of Sunday on the end screen. In hindsight that was probably not the way to go since it left hardly any time to make the actual game, but I had a great time animating those parts and that\u2019s what counts, right?<\/p>\n

The Gameplay<\/strong>
\n Ha, not sure this section counts. I literally spent about two hours before the deadline scrambling to connect the title and end screens together. Since each letter of the title represents a world and had an animated looping component, I simply grabbed those loops and threw them on some backgrounds with a mask to reveal the world underneath. This ended up making the gameplay very shallow and for sure the weakest part of the piece.<\/p>\n

The Audio<\/strong>
\n Most of the music was created Friday night while concepting. I used Figure<\/a> on my phone to create multiple loops that I piece together later in Sound Studio 4<\/a>. For the most part tho I don\u2019t really think the music fits super great with the visuals. Ambient sound would probably have been nicer. The sfx that are there were created quickly with the amazing online tool\u00a0as3sfxr<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Time Management<\/strong>
\n I\u2019ve recently started using a task tracking software called Tyme<\/a> and used it for LD29. It\u2019s kind of interesting to do this and would for sure recommend it. I found it helped keep me focused and minimized distractions. Here\u2019s where I netted out:
\n Concepting \/ 1hr:43min
\n Audio \/ 2hr:18mn
\n Programming {includes design + animation} \/ 17hr:43
\n Submitting \/ 23mn
\n For a total of 22hr07mn<\/p>\n

The Future<\/strong>
\n I\u2019m not sure if I\u2019ll make Delve<\/a> more than it currently is, which is an unintentionally poor knock-off of the amazing pieces by Vectorpark<\/a> like Windosill<\/a>. I have several other game ideas that I may merge with it to give it its own unique voice so it can stand apart. But before that, I need to finish production of\u00a0my miniLD48 game, Lucky Lighter<\/a>, which should be done soon-ish. I’ll be periodically publishing dev updates on the\u00a0twitter<\/a> if interested. Thanks again for looking!<\/p>","time":"May 1st, 2014 4:10 pm","title":"LD29_delve_6"}